Reviewing Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips

Product Details:
Writers: Scott Kelby, Felix Nelson
Book Name: Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips
Publisher: New Rider

As a tips and tricks book, The Photoshop CS2 Killer tips for Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson is not a tutorial book, it helps you explore the hidden tricks in Photoshop CS2 to help you accomplishing tasks faster and easily.

The book starts with some useful tips and trick for Adobe Bridge that come with Adobe Photoshop. The Adobe Bridge tips includes tips that help you work faster such as batch processing your files, renaming, rating to easily reach your search results.

The next chapters of the book describe Photoshop tips and tricks with a friendly light language that suite the nature of the topics discussed in the book.

Each chapter concerns with a group of tips and tricks. For example, chapter 6 (Speedy Gonzalez) concerns with the layers tips and trick, and chapter 7 (Burn Rubber) shows some cool text tips.

I see this book turns the life of the Photoshop users to a fun; they can now achieve with single mouse click what they used to do with a lot of steps and time. I can not recommend this book for beginner as they may find it hard to deal with shortcuts of things they still need to learn about, but I find it a very good book for intermediate and professional Photoshop users.

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Adobe Acrobat 3D review

It has been a problem to send or present 3D works to the client. As you need to make sure that your client has the viewer or finds the way to open it. Now with the new Acrobat family member, Adobe Acrobat 3D, you can make sure that your client do not need to install any 3D VRML viewers or other software to review the 3D works. All you need is to have Adobe Acrobat reader installed to your client machine.

I think Adobe Acrobat 3D is a great tool for presenting products made with 3D or CAD programs such as mechanical equipments; also it is useful for educational purposes for viewing education material in 3D space.

Adobe Acrobat 3D lets you easily capture your 3D models and add it to your PDF files, and it gives you comprehensive set of tools that enable your client from controlling the view of your 3D object like any other 3D viewers such as controlling the view of your object, the lighting options, the render mode, the background color, as well as the ability to view a cross section of your model, viewing its dimensions and view the model tree, where you can view each of the model parts.

Figure1. 3D object embedded to PDF file

Figure2. The 3D view option tool bar

Adobe Acrobat 3d gives you the capabilities to reduce your 3D file to easily share with clients partners using the Reduce File Size from the File menu. In addition to that, Adobe Acrobat 3D enable you and your clients to add comments and notes to the PDF files using a the Comment menu, which include number of feature to manage comments like adding notes, drawing markups, replying comments, importing comment, exporting comment and sending for reviewing feature.

Figure3. The comments feature in Adobe Acrobat 3D

In addition to the 3D feature, Adobe Acrobat 3D include the feature of Adobe Acrobat Professional such as securing and digital signing.
Adobe Acrobat 3D enable you to send your PDFs either through email or upload for browser based review.

Also, Adobe Acrobat 3D comes with another Adobe product, it is Adobe Designer, which allow you to create forms to be sent by email for client to fill and the results are sent back to your email address.

The Adobe Acrobat 3D is a new product from Adobe and I think it is a must-have product for all professionals who work in the 3D and CAD products for easing the delivery and the review process for their products. However, I think 995$ for getting a new version and 545$ for upgrade is little expensive.
Finally, Adobe site includes all the information you need to know to get start with this product at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat3d/

Building istockphoto.com portfolio

After months from adding content, I found that my portfolio is growing bigger and bigger. I got rates, reviews and of course I got paid for each download of my files.
I can imagine after a year of adding content everyday, how much big is my portfolio will be. Especially when the site allows to upload different type of work such as images, Flash, designs and recently video content.

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=261679

Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 review

Adobe Premier is one of the essential tools for any video editor to accomplish video editing and capturing various video formats, edit it and output it in different media such as tapes, TV, DVD or web.
The new version of Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 comes up with new cool features that enhance your work and give you the ability to have a client review version of you work in many methods such as PDF, Email, client review DVD version.
As part of the Adobe Production Studio package, Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 is highly integrated with other Adobe Video products such as Adobe Encore, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Audition and especially Adobe After Effects, which enables you to drag and drop, copy and paste your work between the two products.

The new Premier Pro gives you the capabilities to output your work for web and use in your Flash projects by the ability to export your video work as FLV video format, which is gives you a small video size suitable for using on the web in a variety of methods such as embedding to Flash, progressive download or streaming over the net to your client.

When you buy Adobe Premier Pro 2.0, you will get 17 hours of free training DVD to introduce you to the Adobe Production Studio package software and how to use it.

The new customizable workspace in Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 helps you to benefit from the space for your work and gives you the ability to dock and group panels as well as resizing panels and separating any panel form its group.

Figure1. The new customizable workspace in Adobe Premier Pro 2.0

Another great feature in Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 is the Integrated Titling tool, which allows you to create text, graphics and text effects for your project wither from scratch or from a template.

With this new feature you do not have to create your text in other program such as Photoshop, just open the new Titling tool and create your text and apply the text effect desired on it.

Figure2. Integrated titling tool

If you like to send your edited video to your client to review and comment, the new Clip Notes feature helps you creating PDF files of your work to send to your client and get feedback from their comments.

Figure3. The Clip Notes Export panel

And authoring DVD becomes very simple using the DVD Layout menu which allows you to choose a sequence in the timeline, select you DVD layout from template and simply create your DVD content.

Figure4. DVD Layout panel

In Addition to the above, Adobe Premier Pro contains other new features such as a new Lighting effects filter, Subclip creation, scrolling timeline panel, Feets + frames timecode native HDV editing support, uncompressed HD support, GPU-accelerated render, Multicam editing to edit shoots from multiple-camera and view simultaneously in the quad-view monitor.

And as we said above, Adobe provides a high integration between Adobe Production Studio package and easy access to our resources using Adobe Bridge, which allows you to reach manage multiple files in the same time.

The new Adobe Premier Pro costs 849$ and if you have an old version of the software, I see the new features really worth to upgrade for 199$. You can find more info about Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 at Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/

Reviewing Inside Outside Design (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

Product Details:
Writer: Malcolm Grear
Book Name: Inside Outside From the Basics to the Practice of Design
Publisher: New Riders Press
ISBN: 0-321-44067-6
URL: http://www.peachpit.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321440676&rl=1

Actually, I do not find many books like Malcolm book Inside Outside Design, although I think it is very important for computer designer to know how to merge their academic design and visual studies in their work.Malcolm Grear, the writer of this book, has played a vital role in the industry of design by working as a designer and educator for about 48 years. You can find this obvious from the first paper sin the book.The Inside Outside book provides you a practical way to learn how to use the design and visual concept in the design career. It gives you the basic background that helps your mind generate new ideas based on the theories of design and visual communication, such as working with letters and typography.The book includes a lot of images that help delivering the concept described.You can take the easy way in your designs by following the current styles of designs and animations in your work, but this will not give your ideas the excellence. Understanding the ideas in this book will help you create original creative designs.
Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2 (Reviewed by: Rafiq ELmansy)

Product Details:
Writer: Mordy Golding
Book Name: Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2
Publisher: Peachpit Press
ISBN: 0321337026
URL: http://www.peachpit.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321337026&rl=1

The Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2 is your perfect guide to Illustrator CS2. It gives you a full coverage of this vector graphic program, supported with illustrations and demonstration figures.
With the easy way the book uses, you will a professional in Illustrator. This book gives you in 12 chapters all you need to work perfectly with Illustrator. The book starts with introducing the program working environment in the first chapter, and goes deeper step by step in later chapters to let you explore and understand the Vector graphic and Illustrator objects and tools.
Also, it covers some new features in the new Illustrator CS2 such as Live Trace, Live Paint …etc.
By the end of the book, you will learn how to get your work out of Illustrator by discussing saving and exporting files form it.

Although this book is for intermediate and advanced level, I recommend this book for beginner too. And Take advantage of its simple easy way to deliver the info.

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Reviewing Building Websites with Joomla (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

Joomla is an open-source CMS that enable you to build PHP websites. Hagen Graf's book, Building Websites with Joomla, provides you a complete reference for Joomla CMS features and how to use these features in building dynamic websites and e-commerce web applications.
The book starts with defining the terms and concepts of Joomla to easily understand the tutorial in the book. However, the next chapters start to introduce you to Joomla beginning with the installation in chapter 2 and introducing the Joomla interface features.
The following 4th and 5th chapters show you how to customize Joomla site, menus and managing content.
Chapter 6 includes tutorial about how to install component and modules such as Banners, Contacts, Feeds, Polls and Weblinks.
While the 7th chapter concerns with Forums, Comments and Calendars, the 8th chapter talks about Image Gallery and how to Manage Documents in your site. And chapter 9 concerns with E-commerce.
After describing the content of Joomla, chapter 10 and 11 help you to create your own templates and program extensions.
The writer finishes the book with an online reference of the Mambo and Joomla resources.

Product Details:Writer: Hagen Graf
Book Name: Building Websites with Joomla
Publisher: Packt publishing
ISBN: 1904811949
URL: http://www.packtpub.com/joomla/book

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Reviewing Flash 8 Projects for learning Animation and Interactivity (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

The Flash 8 projects for learning Animation and Interactivity book is a good resource for beginner to learn animation. It takes you step by step using practice examples to teach you basic animation techniques. The title of the book show two issues the first one is learning animation and I think the writer covered this part very well for beginners. The second issue is Learning Interactivity, which is covered along with the animation. The chapter that causes confusion for me is the 13th chapter. As it talks about e-learning in Flash, which is a very big issue that can not covered in one chapter, even for beginners. I think this part needs another book to cover deeply and give the beginner a strong beginning step in the field of e-learning.
Regardless the 13th chapter I see the book focused well and this helps the beginners to grasp the idea of the animation in Flash.


Product Details:Writer: Rich Shupe & Robert Hoekman, Jr.
Book Name: Flash 8 Projects for learning Animation and Interactivity
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 0-596-10223-2
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flashprojects/

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

DV Filmmaking from start to finish review (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

DV Filmmaking for Ian David Aronson gives you in 18 chapter a coverage for the production, post-production and distribution process of the digital film making.The book starts with basic digital Cinematography principles. It covers he process stages such as composing shoots, lighting, shooting, working with cameras, audio, still images and titles.This book doesn’t give you a specific software tutorial, but if you are working learning with video production and video editing program, you should get a background about the whole film making process. However, this book gives you a strong background in this industry. I find this book useful for animators, multimedia designers and creative directors. The two appendixes in the end of the book gives you a tips about getting your work in various media and selling your products. Product Details:Writer: Ian David Aronson

Book Name: DV Filmmaking from start to finish
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN: 0-596-00848-1
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/dvfilmmaking/

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Reviewing Adobe Illustrator CS2 (By Rafiq Elmansy)

With the high integration between Adobe products such as Flash, After Effects, Photoshop and the new Illustrator CS2, I think Designers and animators should use or move to Adobe Illustrator CS2 in the vector image creation process.

The Adobe Illustrator CS2 is a great tool to create vector graphics in a very easy and simple interface. The new version of Illustrator extended the program capabilities with keeping on the simplicity.

Most of the new features in Illustrator CS2 share the same concept; it speeds up your work and makes it simpler.

In this review, I would like to present an overview over some new features that I consider a strong reason to buy or upgrade to Illustrator CS2:

· Live Trace:

The live Trace button in Illustrator CS2 turns you bitmaps images into vector in a button bush with a wide variety of options. You can choose from presets tracing options such as 6 colors, 16 colors, Photo law or high fidelity, grayscale, hand draw sketch and much more. Also, you can optimize the tracing option you desire using the tracing options dialog box.

Figure 01. The Live Tracing dialog box

· Live Paint

The new Live Paint tool really enhances the painting process as it makes it easier and gives you more capabilities such as creating new shapes from overlapped objects and paths that is detected by the Live paint Bracket tool. This feature allows you to create new colored areas and create complex objects from simple one.

Actually, the Live paint tool turns you overlapped objects into filling areas, which can be filled with colors and selected by the Live paint Selection tool.

· Control palette

As we mentioned in the beginning of this review, Adobe Illustrator gives you features to speed your work. And one of these features is the new Control palette. This new palette makes reaching each tool option much faster and easier. It is located in the top of the Illustrator working space and can be moved around according to your needs.

· Custom workspaces

The new Illustrator CS2 enables you to customize your workspace to fit your needs, and save it as a new Workspace. Also, you can manage your workspaces through the Workspace pop-up menu.

· Adobe Photoshop layer comp support

The new version of Adobe illustrator support the Layer comp created in Photoshop, and lets you select from the Layer comps you create in Photoshop.

Figure 02. Photoshop files import option window in Illustrator CS2

· Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge helps you easy locate and manage your Illustrator assets and connect to Adobe Stock Photos for more resource. What is great in Adobe Bridge that it increases the integration between Adobe products and speed your work by easily locate your file and get online assets.

· Mobile Content

Adobe illustrator CS2 extends your capabilities to get artwork out to the tiny screen of the big world of mobility by supporting SVG and tiny SVG format. Adobe illustrator supports saving your work in SVG and tiny SVG format which is support in many handheld and mobile devices. By this new feature, you can extend the market of your work as easy as mouse click.

In addition to the above feature, the new version of Adobe illustrator includes other features such as the ability to assign a spot color to gray scale images, expanded stroke option and PDF/X support.

In my opinion, the extended capabilities in the new version of Adobe Illustrator CS2 really worth to pay 499$ for it. Also, you can upgrade your Illustrator version to CS2 for 169$

And to know more information about Adobe illustrator CS2, you can visit The product page on Adobe site:

http://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator/

10 years of Flash

Adobe is celebrating the Flash 10th birthday, and has launched a microsite for this event. Find more about Adobe celebration on:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/dialogbox/flash_anniversary/

It is really great to select me as one of the ten prespective designers that Adobe enterviewed in this occation, find my enterview on the following link:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/dialogbox/flash_anniversary/index_07.html

Reviewing After Effects 7 Visual Quickpro Guide (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

Product Details:
Book Name: After Effects 7 Visual Quickpro Guide
Writer: Antony Bolante
Publisher: Peachpit publishing
ISBN: 0321383540

Are you new with After Effects? Adobe After Effects 7 Visual Quickpro Guide for Antony Bolante really gives you fast steps toward learning more about this product. This book gives you a strong base to start a leading career using After Effects.
Antony Bolante in his book considered that the reader is beginner in After Effects. So, he describes each tiny part in an easy to understand way.

The first chapters in the book describe this great program, anatomy and tools. And shows you with examples how to use these tools.
For example, chapter 12 shows all about creating text and text animation. It starts with setting the workspace for text and goes through creating text, editing, formatting, setting text options and describes in details how to get the most out of text animation, starting with making the text follow a path, using text animation presets and creating animator groups.
The last chapter teaches you how to get your work out to the world by using different rendering techniques in After Effects.

I think this book is the best resource for beginner After Effect designers and animators, as it really gives you a big push toward the proficiency of Adobe after Effects.

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

PHP and MYSQL for dynamic web sites (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

Product Details:
Writer: Larry Ullman
Book Name: PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide
Publisher: Peachpit press
ISBN: 0321186486
http://www.peachpit.com/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321336577&rl=1


PHP and MYSQL for dynamic websites for Larry Ullman is another member of Visual Quick Pro Guide series that gives you a fast efficient way to learn. The book covers PHP 5 and MYSQL 4.1 for beginners, intermediate and advanced users.
The introduction of the book gives you a fast definition for some important terminology about dynamic websites, what is PHP, why use PHP, how it works and what is MYSQL.
The first chapter is an introduction to PHP language, the basic Syntax, sending data to browser, writing comments, variables, strings, numbers, constants and quotation marks.
The second chapter covers the programming with PHP such as creating forms and validating forms data. The next chapter covers dynamic websites.
Chapter 4 and 5 covers SQL and MYSQL. And using PHP with MYSQL is covered in chapter 7.
The following chapters covers different related issues such as web application developing, cookies, sessions, security, CMS example and ecommerce example.
The book is good start for beginner to learn web developing with PHP and SQL.

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Exploring the Flash Professional 9 ActionScript 3.0 Preview

Jen deHaan is the first to post a preview article about Flash Professional ActionScript 3.0. In her article, Jen preview the new features in Flash Professional AS 3.0 with new ActionScript Virtual machine (AVM) as well as the new scripts in AS 3.0.
read the full article and more in Adobe Developer Center update:http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/
Also, there are new announcements on the Adobe pressroom:http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/

Adding 3D to Flash projects using After Effects

A new artilce has posted for me at adobe site, it talks about how to use After Effects 3D layer feature to enhance you Flash animation with 3D and animating your Flash or Illustrator objects in the 3D space.
Read the full article at Adobe developer center:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/3d_in_flash.html

What Gates's Departure Means for Microsoft

PCworld.com has published an analysis for Bill Gates`s departure affect on Microsoft, read the whole analysis at the following link:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,126127,00.asp

Google news reader

With the Google News Reader you can add the site you like to visit regularly, and keep yourself updated with its news and updated content. The Google News Reader has a simple interface and takes no time to customize. Visit the Google News Reader at the following link:
http://www.google.com/reader/view/

Reviewing Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

The Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics for Shane Rebenchied is a practice book that includes some useful tutorial for both Flash designers and developers. About 50 step-by-step tutorials cover many needed techniques to create a professional Flash application. Such as, formatting dynamically loaded text using HTML, CSS and nested images, building preloader with the MovieClipLoader class, adding a progressively downloading multi-track MP3 player and using component to create a feed back form.

For the first time I looked at the book index, I felt like the tutorials are not very well organized, but with another deep look, I realized that the tutorials are pinpoint the problems you may face when creating a Flash application in a professional way.

The book also includes a CD-ROM with exercises and training videos. To know more about this book you can visit http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321293878

Product Details:
Reviewing Flash Professional 8 Beyond The Basics
Publisher: Peachpit
ISBN: 0-321-29387-8

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Photoshop CS2 RAW from Oreilly

In March, Oreilly has published Photoshop CS2 RAW book, which concern with the RAW extension. This extension gives you more control on the images created from your digital camera as it does not affected by the camera process and deliver you that data captured in an uncompressed format. Read more about this new book at the following link:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/photoshopraw/

Photoshop TV

Photoshop TV is a Photoshop Podcast produced by the NAPP. the www.photoshoptv.com includes nice updated Podcasts for Adobe Photoshop tips and tricks. you can subscribe through iTunes by adding the following URL to Subscribe Podcast list (Advanced > Subscribe Podcast ):

http://feeds.feedburner.com/photoshoptv/

Network for professionals

I was just getting recovered from my latest surgery when my friend Greg Hamer invited me to join Linkedin.com network. I think it is a great network to connect professionals, friends and old colleges. It keeps you updated with your contacts info changes and lets search for jobs within this network and link you with other companies. Visit http://www.linkedin.com/ and join this great community. you can add me to your contact too (Rafiq Elmansy, email rafiqelmansy (at) yahoo (dot) com).

New Cookbook for Flash 8

Oreilly has published a new Cookbook for Flash 8. As the rest of the series, Flash 8 Cookbook is a practice book for both developers and designers. read the following link for more info about this book:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/flash8ckbk/

Submit your work for the 2006 Adobe Customer Reel

You're invited!

Submit your work for the 2006 Adobe Customer Reel by June 30. http://www.adobe.com/motion/customerreel.html

Adobe invites you to submit your work for possible inclusion in the 2006 Adobe Digital Video and Audio Customer Reel! This is a chance to showcase the work you produce using Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Encore DVD, Adobe Audition, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and other Adobe products! We want to see your work and show it to others in the industry so they can see how creative our users are—and see the possibilities of Adobe's Digital Video and Audio products.

Adobe plans to introduce the reel at SIGGRAPH in Boston this August. Over the next year Adobe will also present the reel at tradeshows, seminars and industry events worldwide. This reel also proudly plays in the lobby of Adobe's headquarters—reminding all that some of the coolest products at Adobe are the ones that make images move.

If you are able to grant us the additional right to distribute your materials as part of the Reel for the purpose of promoting Adobe products and services, your work may reach an even wider audience! To be included in versions of the Reel that are played on the Adobe web site and shared with customers and partners, be sure to check the option on the last page of the Non-Exclusive License Agreement.

NTSC Beta SP is our preferred format, but we can also accept Digibeta, miniDV, miniDV (DV, HDV, or HD), and uncompressed movie files (QuickTime and AVI) on data DVDs. We cannot accept PAL, and would prefer to use authored DVDs only if no other option is available, as compression means the finished quality will be less than ideal. This year, we plan to produce the reel in 16:9 format as well as 4:3, so if you have both options available, please send them both to us.

Please tell us which Adobe products you used and a little about the project(s) you're submitting by filling out the contact sheet. If your work has audio, please make sure that you have the rights for Adobe to use the audio or indicate that we need to use copyright free music.

To submit your work:

1) Print and fill out t he Contact Infosheet : http://www.adobe.com/motion/pdfs/2006_dvreel_contactinfo.pdf.

2) Print and complete 2 copies of the Non-Exclusive License : http://www.adobe.com/motion/pdfs/2006_dvreel_license_agreement.pdf

3) Send your reel, both copies of the Non-Exclusive License (one copy will be sent back to you), and the Contact Info sheet to:

Attn: Adobe Customer Reel

Meredith Yeary

Adobe Systems, Inc.

801 North 34^th St.

Seattle , WA 98103

We can't guarantee that your work will be included but we make every effort to include as broad a range of work as possible. Submissions in past years have come from Istanbul, New York, Tokyo, LA, Paris, Poland and virtually everywhere in between, and have represented everything from experimental films and self-promotions to commercials, broadcast graphics, and film compositing projects. We'd love to see what you've been working on, so please send your reel to us!

If you have any questions, please email us at customerreel@adobe.com .

Remember, the submission deadline is June 30. Thanks again for your support!

Sincerely,

The Adobe Digital Video and Audio Product Teams

Cartoonsmart.com video about IE changes

Cartoonsmart.com added a new video tutorial with samples for how to Flash using Javascript after the IE changes, visit the following link for details and free downloads:
http://www.cartoonsmart.com/change_code.html

Adobe Photoshop CS2 review

I remember when I first started to learn Adobe Photoshop, 7 years ago. I started with Photoshop 4; life was not so much easy as it is today. We had to go through a lot of steps to do effects we can do now with fewer steps and less time. Adobe Photoshop goes through a lot of enhancements and improvements since then.

Workflow improvements:

The new version of Adobe Photoshop is part of the new Adobe Creative Suite 2, which provides more workflow with the integration between Adobe applications using Adobe Bridge (figure 1). The new version is more users friendly, saves much time and gives you the ability to create professional outputs in fewer steps with its new features.

In addition to the Adobe Bridge, The new Adobe creative suite includes improvements in the color management by providing a simplified printing interface for color management. As well as Version Cue 2.0, which enable you to manage files either by one user or in workgroup.

Figure 1. Adobe Bridge browser

Photo editing improvements:

Photoshop CS2 includes many new features to improve the photo editing process such as The Camera Raw plug-in, which enable you to apply your setting to a batch of images, The High Dynamic Range, Optical lens correction, noise reduction, Smart Sharpen filter and Spot Healing tool.

With the new Photoshop, you do not have to worry about the red eye problem any more because it removes this problem with the new red eye correction feature. Also, The Blur effects are enhanced with new Blur filters like Box Blur, Shape Blur and Surface Blur.

Design enhancements:

The new Adobe Photoshop CS2 includes great improvements for designers. For example, you do not have to create a perspective to your image manually or relay on third party plug-in to create the perspective effect you need, the new Vanishing Point do it for you.

Also, you do not need to worry about image distortion when you transform your image; the new Smart Object feature creates multiple instances of your image or vector, and updates them all at once (figure 2). As well as the ability to control multiple layers.

In addition to the above design features, which I think it is the most useful for designers, there are some other new features like image wrapping, the ability to create animation, Japanese type features, smart guides and integrated online service.

Figure 2. Free transforming Smart Object

Also, Adobe Photoshop CS2 includes other new features such as customizable menus, batch image processing, new PDF engine, Scripting and action event manager, UI font size customization, Update Manager, Variables as in Image ready, Video preview, WYSIWYG Font menu.

Some old features have also changed such as layer grouping, merging layers, loading selections, clipping mask visibility, file browsing and placing files as smart objects.

As we see from the above brief of the new features in Adobe Photoshop CS2, it provides photographers and designers with some great tools to enhance their work. I think this feature really worth the upgrade, which costs 169$. The new version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 costs 649$.

And to know more about this great product, visit Adobe site at the following link:

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/

Google page creator

Google comes up with a new service that enable you to creat simple web site in a less than a minute as if you are creating a word document. Visit Google page creator section and enjoy:

http://pages.google.com


Rafiq Elmansy
Senior graphic designer,
Macromedia certified professional
www.beedesignstudio.com
www.macromedia-review.blogspot.com

Orisinal games

Since 4 years, a friend told me about this great site Orisinal.com for Ferry Halim. Since then, I run to it when I feel bored or got a work stress and need some freshing. Actually, the games in this site is unique in simplicity, design and colors. if you need to have some rest, just forget every thing around you (except your work manager!!) and play a game or two. Looking to the games colors is enough to refresh your mind. The site link is:

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/


Rafiq R. Elmansy
Multimedia Graphic Designer
Macromedia Certified Proffessional

www.beedesignstudio.com
www.macromedia-review.blogspot.com
www.mmug-egypt.mxdj.com

My New Site

Finally, I have just updated my site(www.beedesignstudio.com), hope very one visit and tell me your opinion, for comments and inquiries, please email me at the following email:

rafiqelmansy(at)yahoo(dot)com

Rafiq R. Elmansy
Multimedia Graphic Design, Macromedia Certified Professional
Adobe User Group Manager
www.beedesignstudio.com

Adobe After Effects 6.5 Magic Review (Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy)

The Adobe After Effects 6.5 Magic for James Rankin and Anna Ullrich is a practice book. You will learn by example 100 of the After Effects techniques through 22 chapters. Each chapter includes project that helps you creating cinematic and commercials animation effects.
Creating each project is described step by step easily and clearly, by the end of each project, you will find a Now Try This section that inspire you with new ideas to apply what you have learnt in each chapter.
The After Effects Magic projects are varies from text, lighting and corporate logo animation techniques. I wished the book includes more projects and order them according to its level. But generally, the book is good choice as a practice resource that lets you easily digest many of the After Effects features.

Reviewed by: Rafiq Elmansy

Product Details:
Book Name: Adobe After Effects Magic
Writer: James Rankin, Anna Ullrich
Publisher: New Riders Press
ISBN: 0321267230

Reviewing Adobe After Effects Studio Techniques (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

The Adobe After Effects Studio techniques book takes you in a tour to explore what is inside this magnificent program and how to use its capabilities in creating video effects.

The book focused on the video production techniques. The first section introduces the program and its working foundations. While the second section concerns with the effects composting, the third section talks about how to work with light, air, water, smoke, clouds and fire effects.

The book level is for intermediate/ advanced. So, you need to have a background about the After Effects to enjoy reading this book.

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Product Details:
Adobe After Effects Studio Techniques
Publisher: Adobe Press
ISBN: 0321316207

Achieving Amazing Easing Effects in Flash article

Among the great features in the new Flash Professional 8, I have concentrated on a wonderful feature for animation and creating animation effect. Which is the new custom easing effect feature. This feature enables Flash animator and designers to create amazing tweening effect and mimic natural animation effects. To read more about this great feature, visit Macromedia site at the following link:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/custom_easing.html

Reviewing Macromedia Flash 8 Training from the Source (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

Macromedia Flash professional 8 training from the Source is a member of the training from the source series that lets you learn by example. The book is good for beginners that need to know about Flash. In the beginning, Tom Green and Jordan L. Chilcott introduce Flash interface and walk through the program features with some useful example for better understanding for the program and its features.
For sure, it is not useful if you want to go deeper and more advanced in the program, but it is still a very good start. This book is also a very useful resource for the Flash certification exam beside the study guide.

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Product Details:
Macromedia Flash 8 Training from the Source
Publisher: Macromedia Press
ISBN: 0321336291

Reviewing Color Management (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

Macromedia Flash professional 8 training from the Source is a member of the training from the source series that lets you learn by example. The book is good for beginners that need to know about Flash. In the beginning, Tom Green and Jordan L. Chilcott introduce Flash interface and walk through the program features with some useful example for better understanding for the program and its features.
For sure, it is not useful if you want to go deeper and more advanced in the program, but it is still a very good start. This book is also a very useful resource for the Flash certification exam beside the study guide.

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Product Details:
Macromedia Flash 8 Training from the Source
Publisher: Macromedia Press
ISBN: 0321336291

Adobe Production studio

The adobe Production Studio is a new Creative suite from Adobe that gether the video editing software such as premier, After Effects and Encoder DVD in addition to Adobe photoshop CS2 and Illustrator CS2.
Visit the following link for more info:
http://www.adobe.com/products/productionstudio/main.html

Adobe Acrobat 3D

Adobe has announced a new Adobe acrobat product named Adobe Acrobat 3D that allows you embed 3D objects from 3D applications like AutoCAD to your PDF file.
This technology will enhance the Adobe acrobat with new capabilities to view 3D object.
To know more about this technology, you can visit the following link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat3d/overview.html

Reviewing Digital Photography Hacks (Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy)

Digital Photography Hacks is a part of O'reilly's hacks series, which provide tricks and solutions for different fields. This book gives you tips and tricks when dealing with your digital camera.

I read this book after reading Digital Photography Guide for the same writer, Direck. So, I found myself comparing between the two books and found the Digital Photography Hacks is an extension for the Digital Photography Guide. These tips and tricks complete your knowledge with some useful methods to create professional photos using tools and things around you.

If you know your camera well, you will find this book very useful and open your mind for new tricks to produce professional photos. However, if you were a beginner in digital photography I would prefer to start with Direck's Digital Photography Guide.

Reviewed by: Rafiq R. Elmansy

Product Details:
Digital Photography Hacks
Publisher: O'reilly
ISBN: 0596006667