This is a blog for reviews and articles about Adobe (Formerly Macromedia)Products, Flash 8 and graphic and animation technologies.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Reviewing Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Book (Reviewed By Rafiq Elmansy)


Published by admin at 5:00 pm under Book Reviews Edit This

The video training book is another amazing tutorial idea from Lynda publisher, it gather s the both benefits of getting the info from books and quickly learn things via video training.

The Adobe Flash CS3 Professional: Video Training Book for Rich Shupe gives teaches you all the essential information needed to start working with Flash CS3 professional with both paper and video materials.

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Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Moneybookers.com. upload, transfer and earn money

I have been using moneybookers.com as a method for online line money transfer for a around a year. It is a good way to transfer money especially when it is supported in almost all the countries. Now, it is offering a way to earn money by referring friends to use it, here is the link to to start joining them and referring friends.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit For Graphic Mania readers

uCertify PrepKit


uCertify PrepKit is provding a special Christmas offer for Graphicmania.net readers. uCertify provides a 10% discount on the uCertify PrepKit of your choice. uCertify PrepKit provides a comprehensive exam tests for various types of exams including Adobe products exams.



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Sunday, December 16, 2007

Adobe After Effects CS3 Review

The first word that comes to my head when I think in Adobe After Effects CS3 is Integration. The new version of Adobe After Effects enters a new era of integration between it and the other CS3 family. You can integrate your work between Adobe After Effects and Photoshop easily, import styles to After Effects and create 3D compositions from the Vanishing Point feature in Photoshop…etc.
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Monday, November 26, 2007

Adobe Photoshop Certification Exam Best Training Resource from uCertify

The certification exams not only helps you getting a self confidence, but also, gives the power of your resume to convince the employers to hire you or promote you in you current job. uCertify.com is providing a great training kit for Adobe products certification exams. Although, the last update is for Adobe Photoshop CS2, but I think it is very helpful to get a clue about the exam environment and got prepared for the real exam using a set of exams and questions that helps you to judge your level and enhance your exam skills to cover all of the Adobe Photoshop features. In this review, we will have a deeper look to the Photoshop exam tool kit and see how it takes your hand along the way to gain the Adobe Photoshop Certification Exam.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Creating video content for mobile devices

Prepare and deploy video on devices in 3G mobile or FLV format for either Flash Lite 2 or Flash Lite 3. This is the subject of my new article ( Creating video content for mobile devices) on Adobe Device Central. Read the full article here

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Adobe Buzzword review part02: Dash Board

The second part of the detailed review for Adobe new word processing web application (Buzzword) is now alive at www.graphicmania.com.
The new part gives a brief about the Buzzword dashboard and its features, find it here.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Adobe Buzzword (Adobe free word-processing web application) Introduction

Recently, Adobe acquired the online word processing application, Buzzword. The new free application provides a new promising idea about turning your word processing activity into the web and gives you the ability to share documents with friends. The new web application provides you the ability to save files in different formats including .RTF and .DOC files.
This is part of the first post of a series of reviews about the new BuzzWord features. Find here more

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Advertise at Graphic Mania

Graphic Mania is offering site banners space on graphicmania.net for site related topics. Our site banner package includes various types of options and can create your own package that fit with your needs and your budget.
Click here to know more about advertising on Graphic Mania and the limited offer.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Adobe Share Beta

A new post to review in a breif the new Adobe web application, Adobe Share beta, the new software that allows to easily share and store files remotily with frieds or to use from any where, here is the new review

Sunday, October 21, 2007

So you think you are a Creative Person (Tell about you)

The creative person could be a designer, coder or a project manager, in this article, I am addressing the graphic designers, web designers, animations and photographers who enjoy the pain of the new idea and controlled by it.

Through my working experience as a graphic and web designer, I saw that the real creative person is driven with his or here creative nature. The love of the new ideas, the desire to be part of it drives him/her to choose him/her career.
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Friday, October 19, 2007

Graphic Mania Adobe Photoshop review on Adobe site

While I was checking the Photoshop CS3 reviews page on Adobe site, I was so happy to see my review for the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 has been posted to the reviews page. Here is the Adobe Photoshop review page on Adobe site and here is a direct link to my reivew on graphicmania site.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Reviewing Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one (by: Rafiq Elmansy)

Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One

Deke McClelland continues his Photoshop On-on-one series with the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one. The book covers with training examples the features in Adobe Photoshop CS3.
The book takes you starting from opening and organizing files in Photoshop as the default start for any one starts work in Photoshop. And covers in the second and third lessons the color features such as highlighting, midtones, shadows and correcting color balance in Photoshop.

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Sunday, October 07, 2007

Graphic Mania


We are happy to announce our new graphic, web and animation site www.graphicmania.net . The site is frequently updated with graphic, web and animation resources such as tutorials, reviews, articles, and downloads for graphic tools such as Adobe Flash and Photoshop.


Thanks alot!!

www.graphicmania.net

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

The New interface for GraphicMania

I updated my article and tutorials site Graphic Mania with a new interface, I think it is more clear and easy to use than the old one. I also add frequently updates that I thin it would be useful for web designers and graphic designers, The updates include downloads, Flash content, Software and useful links in addition to the updated graphic news.

Please visit my new site and let me know your comments at : rafiqelmansy (at)yahoo (dot) com:

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

New Flash stock content

New updated Flash animation stock content to graphicmania.net, the new content set are cartoon animation Flash from my portfolio at istockphoto.com, here is the URL of the new content:

http://www.graphicmania.net/?page_id=3

Friday, September 21, 2007

A new post about Active Content on IE7

I added a breif about how to remove the "click to activate" rectangle in IE7 related to Active Content. visit my tutorial site for more info at:
http://www.graphicmania.net/

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Graphic Mania

Yes, it is the time!! I have just created my new website for articles, reviews, news and resources about grpahic, design, animation, Flash Photoshop and other Adobe Products. Here is my new site URL:
www.graphicmania.net

I would be glade if you visit it and tell me your comments her or at my email:
rafiqelmansy (at) yahoo (dot) com

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

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

Sunday, November 12, 2006

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/