seanwillson.com

if your looking for some nicely written step-by-step photoshop how-to examples with movies and downloadable pdf directions look no further than dvgarage techtv downloads. each week (i think it’s weekly) they appear on techtv and provide a new tip for using photoshop to modify and retouch your photos. they have some very cool tips like bluescreen compositing, creating an unsharp mask (very cool and works great), curves, brushes and more. if your new to the more advanced features of photoshop like i am you’ll find these examples priceless.

i’ve been reading a lot of articles about the newest release of photoshop. the marketing guru’s have decided to throw us all a curve ball and instead of following a logical software numbering scheme they took a page from the microsoft obfuscation handbook and named this release photoshop cs (creative suite). sure it sounds snappy but really, what’s the point?

anyhow, i’ve been thinking about picking up this latest release but wanted to make sure i was getting some bang for my buck. here are a few of the reviews i found useful, maybe you will as well.

• creative mac’s review goes into great detail about the 16-bit image upgrades, camera raw formats, new image manipulation functions (check out the cool butter fly example), file browser, text on a path and more. lots of images and the usual detail you get from the creative mac folks.
• brainstorms & raves review has brief overviews and links to several of the same articles that i read, and more.
• bergman graphics review asks the experts to give their review of the new release. i was really hoping for more information and detail from lynda weinman but she was surprisingly quiet and short on words. the other “experts” seemed to have many positive things to say about the new feature set.
• dp reviews’ review yet more detail and depth to the camera raw support, color match, new commands, and the way cool filter gallery feature.
• macworld’s review somehow without a single photo they reviewed a piece of photo editing software. oh yea, you have to buy the magazine to see the pictures. that’s so 90’s …
• adobe, from the horses mouth …

there are a few others but needless to say the message was getting repetitive. i definitely think that i’ll be picking up a copy of photoshop cs when time and cash flow permit. given the amount of time spent in 7.0 recently doing image sharpening and tweaking i found myself really having fun. actually i’ve been looking into taking a photoshop class recently, just to have a structured class to learn within. is anyone else finding the cs upgrade worthwhile? complaints?

I received my copy of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web the other day. Just skimming through it and reading the first chapter I like what I’ve read. I’ll let you know how it reads when I actually get more time to dive into it. I’m trying to knock out a few novels I’ve bought recently. I have a few shelves of books that I’ve been dying to read but only recently had train time to do it.

The W3C has released a working draft of Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web. The goal of this document is to “establish a reference set of principles for Web architecture.” The document does a good job highlighting those principles, best practices, and goes into some detail explaining identifiers, formats, and protocols. This is a good reference and starting point for someone who’s interested in understanding Web architecture.

The latest edition of Digital Web Magazine has an interview with Steven Champeon and Shirley Kaiser of the Web Standards Project (WaSP). It also has an excerpt from Forward Compatibility: Designing & Building With Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman which is scheduled to be released in early 2003. The piece is entitled “99.9% of Websites Are Obsolete.” In the article he explains how this is due to the legacy markup used to make web pages usable in ancient browsers. Hacks upon hacks are often used to fix browser bugs and inconsistencies. It’s all about that elusive “backwards compatibility” that corporate executives so often ask for but don’t understand. As usual Jeff makes some great points that don’t attempt to sugar coat things like some people do. Let’s just hope that my sites stay a part of that other 0.1%.

There’s a review of the aforementioned IA book at Digital Web if your interested.

Boxes and Arrows has been busy churning out some new content. They have an article on MSWeb: An Enterprise Intranet which is a excerpt from the new Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (2nd Edition) soon to arrive at stores and on my front step.