Updated 7-22-96
Updated 7-22-96
ISSN 1068-9109
July 1996 Contents
Master Table of Contents
by Dana Trout, GDTPUG
I have been reading a batch of good books recently and it's about time I told you about them. First, though, I had better tell you that I seldom read a book cover to cover—I rarely find a technical book that will keep my interest for all the subjects covered. Instead, I look at technical books as tools that teach me the things I need to know right now, so it is important that the books be laid out in a manner which lets me find the section of current interest quickly, and the writing style be unambiguous and concise. A little humor can be helpful, but it should be an aid, not an impediment, to understanding. One thing I would like to stress is that a book is truly a work of art, and like any other kind of art what impresses or excites one person may not be interesting to another. If you find your interest piqued by any of the following reviews, by all means go to your local bookstore and thumb through the book before buying it: you may find the author curt and terse where I though s/he was refreshingly concise.
I have several books about PhotoShop (PS). (That's kind of like saying Imelda has several pairs of shoes: how many people do you know that has a 8 foot wide by 7-1/2 foot tall bookcase in the dining room, and a 6x7-1/2 foot bookcase in the bedroom to contain the stuff that didn't fit in the office or library?)
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My favorite for learning the tools of PS is Real World Photoshop 3 by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser (Peachpit, ISBN 1-56609-169-1, $40). It is well organized, starting with the important first step of calibrating the monitor and working its way into the subtleties of PS. The book is written for the Macintosh audience, but that should not be considered a limitation by the Windows crowd: PS 3 is virtually the same on both platforms (as long as you remember to substitute the Command key on the Mac for the Control key in Windows). The biggest problem for the Windows PS user is that there is no Knoll Gamma calibrator for the monitor like there is on the Mac. It is important to calibrate the monitor regardless of platform, because it is by viewing the monitor that you make decisions about what (if any) modifications you want to make to the image.
Real World Photoshop 3 has the most lucid explanation I have seen about how to correct low-contrast, muddy, or thin pictures. The authors clearly show the limitations of using the Contrast and Brightness controls, and why Levels and Curves are much more appropriate. Just this one little exposition is well worth the price of the book—otherwise you might foolishly spend hours using the wrong tools to make a marginal picture acceptable. And your time is worth something, isn't it?
Of course, Real World Photoshop 3 doesn't spend all of its 573 pages on these two topics: it also covers scanning resolution (at what resolution should you scan an image in order for it to print well), color essentials (and the importance of gamut, which is the range of colors that can be printed vs. the actual range of colors the eye can see), tonal correction, color correction, masking, layers, and all the neat stuff PS lets you play with.
This book is not just a dictionary that explains each tool or dialog box: it starts from the premise that there is something you want to accomplish and shows you which tool to use, how to use it, and why. The only problem I have with this book is finding it: I so often get it out to look at it that it is rarely in its assigned place in the bookcase.
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Start with a Scan (SWAS) is a worthwhile book by Janet Ashford and John Odam (Peachpit, ISBN 0-201-88456-9, $35). This book's premise is that you want to scan some art and use the computer to transform it into something quite different (Real World assumed that most of the time you wanted to merely improve the printability of the image). SWAS spends far less time with the PS color and tonal correction tools and instead invests the bulk of the book in showing you how to colorize or posterize images, combine different kinds of images into collages, use the effects such as swirl, “painting” with scanned textures such as pencil shading, and so on. Real World shows you how to use the tools to make very good representational images (with some space devoted to “artistic” extensions) while SWAS shows you many ways of going past representational expression: it fires the imagination.
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Photoshop in Black and White by Jim Rich and Sandy Bozek (Peachpit, ISBN 1-56609-117-9, $18) is a slim 44 pages of concise instructions about how to scan and print pictures in PS. Its feature is its brevity and clarity: in a mere two pages it concisely covers the topics of drum and flatbed scanners, image types (continuous tone and line art; transparent and reflective), proofs (laser, contact print, Matchprint<191> or Chromalin<191>), the tradeoff between spatial resolution and tonal depth (for instance, at 300 dpi a 133 lpi screen gives only five shades of gray), and dot gain. Clearly such terseness leaves out a lot of subtleties but it does have the advantage of quickly focusing your attention on what is important for your own work. Photoshop in Black and White distills the absolutely most important items and presents them clearly with a supporting image.
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Photoshop in 4 Colors by Mattias Nyman (Peachpit, ISBN 0-201-88424-0, $23) is nearly double the length of PS in Black and White and its style is considerably more relaxed. Lots more text, larger pictures, and more white space make this book seem much less like a final exam cram card than an end-of-term review session. For instance, the description of color reproduction and gamut is covered in four pages and 11 figures to deal with the differences in color models (additive and subtractive), the necessity for black in the subtractive (CMY) model, the difference between what the eye can see and what either a monitor or a printed piece can reproduce, and that there is a difference between the European (Euroscale) and USA (SWOP) subtractive colors.
Each section is short, typically 2 to 4 pages, but covers the topic well and is well illustrated. Most of the important printing topics are covered: screens, resolution, color systems, tonal range, file formats, proofs, calibration, scanning, tone correction, color correction, separations, image manipulation, duplex halftones (for extended printed tonal range or duotones), tonal changes (dot gain and loss at various steps of the reproduction process), lossy image compression (JPEG), trapping, and questions to ask a printer. The last few pages are step by step directions for scanning, Photo CD, tone correction, color correction, sharpening, separation, and background stripping. These directions summarize the issues to think about and resolve before doing each of the specified tasks.
Photoshop in 4 Colors is not my favorite book, but I do get it out from time to time for that little piece of extra information that I do not find in the others.
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On a completely different topic, another book that I've used a great deal (and this was after I learned HTML) is Elizabeth Castro's HTML for the World Wide Web (Peachpit, ISBN 0-201-88448-8, $18). I had successfully resisted the urge to acquire an HTML book up until I got this one because all the info about HTML is on the Web—why buy a book when it is all out there just waiting for me to look at it? The answer is simple: it is a lot faster to look up the relevant info in the book than it is to get it from the Web, even though I have the salient areas already bookmarked. The book assumes that you will be writing pages from scratch in HTML (a reasonably good assumption if you want full control over your pages) and covers what you need to do to make a good page. It shows you how Mosaic (the basis of Microsoft's Internet Explorer) and Netscape will display the same page, so you understand why you need to use certain constructs to make pages that look good in different browsers. Castro even gets to the point of doing CGI forms, but this section is not complete (a good thing, too, because to do it justice the book would have to delve into at least one programming language (like Perl), and the fact that what you can do depends on what your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is willing to support—such an expansion would easily double the size of the book).
HTML for the World Wide Web is a good, solid intro to HTML programming (actually, it's much more like word processing with visible tags) which covers text formatting, JPEG and GIF images (as well as alternative text), links and anchors, lists, tables, forms, tools, and publishing (testing your pages, preparing the files for transfer, transferring them to your ISP's server, and advertising your site). It also has a couple of important appendices: how to get special symbols to appear the same on both the Mac and PC, and a chart showing the hex values for different colors (important for text colors and solid backgrounds). One minor nit is this book does not cover the fact that Windows and the Macintosh do not use the same color palette, and it is important to choose colors that either will reproduce well.
This book is useful for both the person who wants to write HTML from scratch as well as those who wish to take the HTML created by some other tool and improve or customize it. Every time I look at what PageMaker does for HTML output, or Microsoft's HTML Assistant for Word, or many of the other tools, I want to get my hands on the document and “fix” it (no, not neuter but give it some robustness to allow for the vagaries of the different browsers, window sizes, and so on). I've often found this book on top of my desk instead of in its place in the “important manuals” drawer.
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by Dana Trout, GDTPUG
I'm sure we've all thought that it would sure be handy if instead of having torn-out pages from magazines, scribbled notes, faxes, and what-all all stashed in various folders, drawers, piles, and heaps, we could put all that stuff on the computer and lead a saner, more organized life. Electronic Imaging and Document Management are the terms used to describe this function, and several offshoots exist, including COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk). Most of these applications have been big bucks items for major departments and until recently home and SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) computers just didn't have the horsepower or storage space to deal with this stuff.
Several products have come out for the SOHO market: one of the earliest to gain significant acceptance was PageKeeper from Caere. More recently GreenSoft has introduced GreenDesk, and TDF Corporation has produced Personal Image Edition (PIE). Each of these products allow you to scan, store, and retrieve documents, but the specifics and functionality vary widely. For right now I would like to focus on GreenDesk and PIE.
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GreenDesk
GreenDesk is an inexpensive (approx $50 street price) application
which uses an “electronic file cabinet” metaphor and runs
under either Win3.x or Win95. It has a universal in-box (a specific
subdirectory/folder) which accepts scanned, faxed, or native files.
It has its own OCR (optical character recognition) capability to convert
faxes and scanned text into editable text files. One interesting feature
that only recently took the big boys of electronic imaging by storm
is scale to gray. What this means is that if you have a black
and white image (as contrasted to grayscale) image of a document the
scale to gray function makes the edges softer (levels of gray with
the darkness corresponding to how many black pixels are immediately
adjacent to the current pixel) which makes the images (especially
text) much more legible. It is exactly the same concept as anti-aliasing.
Well, GreenDesk even has this feature!
One other important feature of GreenDesk is that you can change the path of the imaged document at a later date (great for off-loading to a removable disk, like a Zip, EZ135, or Jaz). The indexing scheme used in the database can be the default “long file name” or “contact info” (last name, first name, company, phone, and fax), or any set of fields you want to construct. This is a major feature of GreenDesk and we will address it in more detail later.
The installation is from three floppies and goes quite smoothly except for the minor glitch that it asked for name, company, and serial number. I couldn't find the serial number but it installed anyway. One feature of the installation program is that even though it defaults to install on drive C it lets you choose any other drive. If you tell GreenDesk that you don't want C, it then displays all available drives and the amount of space available on each of them. This is a really nice feature I wish more manufacturers would use.
What GreenDesk Does
The two central portions of GreenDesk are its InBox, where you file
new documents, and the search function, where you find the documents
you are looking for. The InBox displays each file that is ready to
be filed along with its keyword description, date and time, number
of pages, and source (fax, scanner, or native document). You can click
on any one of these column headings to cause the documents to be sorted
in that order (i.e., sort by keyword, date, number of pages, or source).
From the InBox you can import new documents, or view, assign a new
keyword description, delete, or file one that is already there.
When you file a document you put it into a folder in a drawer in a file cabinet. You can have multiple cabinets each with multiple drawers, each with multiple folders which each contain multiple files. Filing is drag and drop: open the proper cabinet, drawer and folder, then highlight the document in the InBox and drag it to the folder. At this point a dialog box will pop up to let you add descriptive information about the file. The keyword will already be transferred for you, but you can add to them as well as define other fields and fill them in too. For instance, you can set up a template for faxes that has fields for who from, fax number, and topic, while for other documents you can have different fields. Invoices could have fields for invoice number, customer PO number, and so on. It is important to think through what you want to be able to search for later, because if you don't put it there you won't be able to find it later.
Searching
The other half of the process is finding what you have filed. You
can search for specific keywords in any field you have defined. The
search includes operators such as boolean AND and OR, as well as relational
operators such as equal to, greater than, less than, not equal to,
and contain.
Nits
I did find some things I wasn't real thrilled about, but I classify
most as nits rather than major problems.
The zoom in and zoom out tools are separate. Personally I find this much more awkward than have just one tool and shift or alt-click for the other.
The OCR is generally good but does have some interesting glitches (no, it does not threaten OmniPage or TextBridge). One is that “ful” always turns into “fUl.” “Could” is recognized OK, so it's not just “ul” that causes the OCR grief. GreenSoft includes a sample fax for use in the tutorial. The word “keyword” appears many times in the fax, but is never recognized properly. “I'll” turns into “I'11” (That's I apostrophe one one). The reason I consider these OCR problems as mere nits is that OCR is handy but not crucial—GreenDesk maintains the original scanned image for you to refer to when you want to read the document. The OCR is handy for helping select keywords, and I will be happier when it works better.
GreenDesk
GreenSoft Corporation
(800) 588-3375
http://www.greendesk.com
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Personal Image Edition
TDF Corporation's PIE has surface similarities to Greensoft's GreenDesk.
The major feature PIE has going for it is price: you can download
it for free from the Web (http://www.tdf.corp.com) or pay $10 for
a CD-ROM that contains the program and associated documentation files
(documentation is not available from the Web). Without documentation
I have had some trouble figuring out the features and limitations
of this program. It doesn't have OCR, nor does it seem to have any
way for the user to define custom description fields. You can search
for specific words in keywords, description, comments, index date,
original date, document, author, text within the document, and sticky
note. The search operators are more limited than GreenDesk: only two
words that can be boolean ANDed or ORed. If you search for a word
all words that contain that word match as well. At times this is handy,
but other times it is a real pain: look for “ample” and you
will also get “sample” and “trample”. Look for “fig”
and every document that has “figure” will pop up too.
PIE is interesting and apparently even includes scale to gray as well as the ability to handle Photo-CD images. But the search criteria seem to be limited, and even though you can rename the five search fields, you cannot create new ones like you can with GreenDesk. For the moment I am more interested in GreenDesk than PIE because I want my search results to be as focused and productive as possible: I do not want to get trampled by extraneous matches to a search for “ample.”
Personal Image Edition
(717) 794-5859
http://www.tdf.corp.com
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