Readers can browse the detailed index that offers subheadings under each chapter, making it easy to find specific points, or techniques. The book’s initial section focuses on getting started (uploading lesson files), setting computer preferences and how to play video tutorials (requires Adobe Flash). Learning what’s new in Dreamweaver CS5 is found in Chapter 16. Each lesson chapter provides step-by-step instructions (no long paragraphs), and numerous lessons are provided on the DVD insert.

Some screen shots throughout the individual sections point out various tools, or techniques identified in the individual directions. However, since this is a beginning Dreamweaver CS5 book, it would be helpful to view more screen shots in the book that specifically identifying cursor placement, or what the screen work area looks like during various steps. However, readers can refer to the supplemental video tutorials, which are very informative and a bonus to this tutorial package.

Self Study Section
At the end of each chapter there is a self study section, plus topic questions and related answers. The individual chapters do not state their estimated time length, but from practicing a few lessons, I would assume the average user may need 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Video lessons are short and informative.

If you are interested in learning Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, then consider this book as an option.

Contact: www.digitalclassroombooks.com
Cost: $49.99 US; $59.99 CAN

Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Digital Classroom allows beginning to intermediate web designers the opportunity to practice a wide variety of skills learning Adobe Flash Professional CS5. Lesson files and tutorial videos allow the reader to learn how to edit, tweak, and enhance digital photographs. Advanced digital photographers familiar with Flash Professional CS5 can also pick up interesting tips and techniques in later chapters.

Readers can browse the detailed index that offers subheadings under each chapter, making it easy to find specific points, or techniques. The book’s initial section focuses on getting started (uploading lesson files), setting computer preferences, basic to advanced animation, creating and delivering a movie, and how to play video tutorials. Learning what’s new in CS5 is found in Chapter 15. Each lesson chapter provides step-by-step instructions (no long paragraphs), and numerous lessons are provided on the DVD insert.

Extra screen shots throughout the individual sections point out various tools, or techniques identified in the individual directions. Readers can also refer to the supplemental video tutorials, which are very informative and a bonus to this tutorial package.

Self Study Section
At the end of each chapter there is a self study section, plus topic questions and related answers. The individual chapters do not state their estimated time length, but from practicing a few lessons, the average user may need 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Video lessons are short and informative.

Interested in learning Adobe Flash Professional CS5?  Then, consider this book as your next read.

Contact: www.digitalclassroombooks.com
Cost: $49.99 US; $59.99 CAN

Readers can browse the detailed index that offers subheadings under each chapter, making it easy to find specific points, or techniques. The book’s initial section focuses on getting started (uploading lesson files), setting computer preferences and how to play video tutorials (requires Adobe Flash). Learning what’s new in Dreamweaver CS5 is found in Chapter 16. Each lesson chapter provides step-by-step instructions (no long paragraphs), and numerous lessons are provided on the DVD insert.

Some screen shots throughout the individual sections point out various tools, or techniques identified in the individual directions. However, since this is a beginning Dreamweaver CS5 book, it would be helpful to view more screen shots in the book that specifically identifying cursor placement, or what the screen work area looks like during various steps. However, readers can refer to the supplemental video tutorials, which are very informative and a bonus to this tutorial package.

Self Study Section
At the end of each chapter there is a self study section, plus topic questions and related answers. The individual chapters do not state their estimated time length, but from practicing a few lessons, I would assume the average user may need 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. Video lessons are short and informative.

If you are interested in learning Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, then consider this book as an option.

Contact: www.digitalclassroombooks.com or www.wiley.com
Cost: $49.99 US; $59.99 CAN

This book also discusses the fragmentation of media channels, and how easy it is for a consumer to only select certain media channels that cater to their viewpoint. People tend to migrate to media outlets that support their personal world view.

Information is cited in each chapter. This book is intended for classroom discussion, but can be read for self study. It reflects upon past and present studies of media use, its impact, plus historical and current bias. Many individuals don’t recognize the bias of media, and the importance of consuming a broad variety of media viewpoints. Let’s face it, every media outlet has their own ax to grind, whether it’s an “independent” blogger, CNN, or Fox News.

Contact: www.wiley.com
Cost: $84.95 US

To operate Google TV, users have to purchase a new Sony Internet TV (no cost listed online, but probably pricey), or buy the Logitech Review ($299) to attach to their TV. Will there be an attached subscription cost with the TV, along with the cable, satellite, and other services?

Call me a skeptic, but instead of watching Netflix movies, YouTube, or catching up on the latest news on your computer, you can watch it on a bigger screen via Google TV. And while checking out an interesting website when watching a game, that’s possible too. However, connecting a HDMI, or VGA cable from a laptop computer, or computer to your TV works great too for watching movies.

Educational Opportunities
Pricing may restrict Google into the educational market, however, I can see teachers using Google TV for various lesson plans. Say an English teacher’s lesson focused on Henry IV. While discussing a specific scene, they could link to the movie via Netflix, or YouTube (no DVDs required) and play the specific act while students were reading the play at their desks. Chemistry teachers could display various 3D chemical formulas from a website (water, methane gas, C4 explosives – chem teachers do like to blow things up), open up a separate video link and portray the physical product, or end result. However, will Google offer a discount to schools and colleges to encourage classroom integration?

More Moola For More Toys
Google TV sounds like another form of multitasking, gotta have it all attitude. Google TV is providing another box to integrate your TV inputs (satellite, cable, or over the air TV), the internet and upload some special service software…my, this sounds like a specialized, entertainment computer. Pass me the remote, or was that the phone?

Will Google TV deliver the convenience of an integrated, entertainment or educational experience? It has the potential, but…we’ll see.

Image Doctor 2.0 includes:

Improvements to Image Doctor 2.0 provide:

Clean & Easy Interface
Each Image Doctor 2.0 filter opens with a clean, easy-to-use interface that provides intuitive defaults and the power of custom adjustments. Select “Settings” tab, and this interface offers a selection of factory default output settings. Custom settings can be saved and reused that enhance efficiency. Choose the “Basic” tab on the user interface to adjust sliding default and custom settings.

Image Quality
To test Image Dr image quality, test images were selected from photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor). The selected images were processed using both Photoshop CS4 and the Image Dr filters. The original and “Doctored” images are presented below.

Image Doctor – Smart Fill

Crop of original image

Using Smart Fill filter, red buoy is removed

Using Smart Filter a second time cleans up the water and the hillside

Removing the buoy presents several backgrounds – water, rock wall, buildings along the water, and the trees. As recommended in the user manual, the buoy was replaced in four steps. Each step selected a section of the buoy with a different background. The manual does an excellent job of explaining this process.

Manipulating the adjacent image required the “Manual–complex background” from the Factory Settings on the Settings tab. By selecting one of the “Manual” Factory settings, the user can select the area of the image that would be used in to replace the selected section of the image.

For some images, using the Smart Fill Filter a second time can significantly improve the result.  For this image, none of the “Auto” Factory settings gave acceptable results. The “Auto” settings worked better with a consistent background.

As shown above, Smart Fill filter works great with trees and foliage, and does an acceptable job with the buildings in the background. However, this filter did a fair job of replacing water. The Smart Fill filter appears to have difficulty creating the inherent patterns. In water, typically ripples, waves have a pattern that look artificial when broken.

Image Doctor – Blemish Concealer

Crop of original photo

Image using both Skin Softener and Blemish Concealer

Blemish Concealer zapped the blemish over the right eye, and reduced the red coloring on the nose. Skin Softener softened and smoothed the smile lines. Now the subject is happy. As show above the combination of Skin Softener and Blemish Concealer work wonders on the young, and the young at heart.

Image Doctor – Dust and Scratch Remover
Not only can you remove dust and scratches, but the Dust and Scratch Remover filter remove offending lines, trees, branches that in photos, seem to “grow” out of people’s heads. Select the Photoshop lasso tool and then remove as a group using the “Remove object – large features” Factory Setting on the Settings tab. As explained in the User Manual, the “Random Seed” button on the Basic tab should be clicked several time to get the replaced area to look good. Power lines, barbed wire fences, or other objects can be removed successfully.

Alien Skin offers a free download at Product Downloads , and video tutorials can be viewed at Alien Skin Tutorials.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 with PowerPC G5 or Intel processor (Adobe Photoshop CS2 9.0.2; Photoshop Elements 4.0.1; Adobe Photoshop Elements 5; Fireworks CS3); Windows XP with Intel Pentium 4 processor (Adobe Photoshop CS2 9.0.2; Photoshop Elements 4.0; Phtoshop Elements 5; Fireworks CS3; Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2)
Contact: www.alienskin.com
Cost: $199

Snap Art 2.0 offers ten different filters for creating the perfect hand drawn artwork from a photo. Snap Art filters include: Color Pencil, Comics, Impresto, Oil Pant, Pastel, Pen and Ink, Pencil Sketch, Pointillism, Stylize, and Watercolor.

New in Snap Art 2.0:
• Higher levels of photo-realism
• Control over the level of photo-realism with a slider
• Adjustable focus regions control where detail is preserved
• Improved presets
• Photoshop CS4 panel

Clean & Easy Interface
Each Snap Art filter opens in a clean, easy-to-use interface that provides intuitive defaults and the power of custom adjustments. By selecting “Settings” tab, this interface provides a selection of more than 700 factory preset settings. Custom settings can be saved and reused enhancing efficiency. The default and custom settings can be adjusted with sliders after selecting one of the four adjustment tabs: Basic, Color, Canvas or Lighting on the user interface.

The addition of focus regions enables control over how the filter is applied to the image. Typically, the focus region is placed over the subject, or a specific portion to preserve important detail.

Example Images
To illustrate the film effects provided by Snap Art 2.0, an image was selected from photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor), and processed in Photoshop CS4 using Snap Art factory presets. Crops of the original and processed images are presented below.

Original Photo

Art’s Color Pencil filter using Abstract (large pencil preset)

Color Comics – large feature size, vignette preset

Snap Art’s Watercolor filter using Landscape (moderate realism)

Snap Art’s Watercolor filter using Landscape – Large Brush, abstract colors preset

The above images are just a taste of the over 700 presets available in Snap Art 2.0. Use one of the presets to obtain the desired natural art look, then employ the controls in the four adjustment tabs to fine tune the image with the full creative power of Snap Art 2.0. Alien Skin offers a free 21-day download to experience Snap Art 2.0.

System Requirements:

This product requires one of the following host applications:

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 or later
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0.1 or later on Mac
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 or later on Windows
• Adobe Fireworks CS4
• Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2

Windows:

• Intel Pentium 4 processor (or compatible)
• Windows XP or later

Macintosh:

• PowerPC G5 processor or Intel processor
• Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later

Contact: www.alienskin.com
Cost: $199 full version

Multiple Presets for Film Quality
DX0FilmPack 1.0 included presets for poplar slide and print films from Kodak and Fuji including Kodachrome and Fuji’s Provia. FilmPack 2.0 adds presets for films like Polaroid 669, Kodak Kodak Ektachrome, and Agfa Ulta Color 100. A total of 27 new film profiles and 8 color filters were added. The user interface was also improved to provide control over the grain, contrast and saturation.

Example Images
To illustrate the film effects provided by DXO FilmPack, selected images were taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor). The selected photo was processed in Photoshop CS4 using FilmPack’s film profiles, with 100% crops of the original and processed images presented below.

Original photo

FilmPack’s Fuji Velvia 50 profile

FilmPack’s Fuji Velvia 100 color profile and the Velvia 50 grain profile

FilmPack’s Kodak Tri-X profile

The above examples are just a small sample of the 50 film profiles available to create the right image mood, or tone. DXO FilmPack contains the ability to mix color and film profiles, and does not require Photoshop or DXO Optics Pro. However, DXO FilmPack cannot be accessed directly from Adobe Lightroom. Yet, if you’re looking for that high quality film for digital images, consider DXO’s FilmPack 2.0.  DXO offers a 21-day free demo online.

System Requirements:

• 1 GB RAM
• 100 MB available disk space
• Adobe Photoshop CS2, CS3 or CS4, or Adobe Photoshop Elements (version 4, 5, 6 or 7 for Windows; version 4, 5 or 6 for Macintosh) for the Adobe Photoshop plug-in
• DxO Optics Pro v5.3.1 (or higher) for the DxO Optics Pro plug-in

Windows :

• Intel® Pentium® 4 processor or AMD® equivalent (Pentium® Dual Core or higher or equivalent recommended)
• Microsoft® Windows XP, Windows Vista 32 or 64 bits

Macintosh :

• Universal Binary (G4, G5 or Intel-Mac)
• Mac OS X.4 or X.5

Contact: www.dxo.com

Cost: $99 (US)

And in today’s media classes, students may not realize the difference in quality from film to digital quality images. Using Exposure v2.0 will broaden their experience by contrasting different image quality, and improve their photo skills.

Exposure v.1.0 included presets for popular slide and print films from Kodak and Fuji, including Kodachrome and Fuji’s Provia. Exposure v2.0 adds presets for available films, such as Kodak Porta 160NC and VC; Kodak Ultra Color 100; Fuji Pro; Fuji Reala; and Polaroid. Alien Skin also obtained a few rolls of discontinued films to create presets for Agfa Scala, Fuji Velvia 50, and Polaroid Polapan. Exposure v2.0 incorporates a new grain generator with more grain controls, special effects presets, and an improved user interface.

Clean & Easy Interface
With Exposure v2.0, both the color film and black&white film exposure filters open into a clean, easy-to-use interface that provides intuitive defaults, and the power of custom adjustments. By selecting the “Settings” tab, this interface provides a selection of more than 200 factory preset settings. Custom settings can be saved and reused enhancing efficiency. Default and custom settings can be adjusted with sliders after selecting one of the four adjustment tabs: color, tone, focus or grain on the color film user interface. The black and white film user interface adds an infrared (IR) adjustment tab.

Images
To illustrate the film effects provided by Exposure, an image was selected from photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor). The selected image was processed in Photoshop CS4 using Exposure factory presets. Presented below are 100% crops of the original and processed images.

100% crop of the original photo

100% crop of original phot with Exposure Kodachrome 25

100% crop of the photo after processing with Exposure’s Fuji Reala preset.

100% crop of photo after processing with Exposure's Fuji Velvia 50

100% crop of photo after processing with Exposure’s Fuji Velvia 50 preset with the push processing slider set to +1.

The above examples are just a small sample of over 200 presets available to create the right image mood, or tone. If you have a quality digital image, but the image is well… too digital for your story or portfolio, consider applying Alien Skin’s Exposure v2.0 plug-in to regain that film quality look. Exposure v2.0 can be applied to Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Photoshop CS4, but is not available for Lightroom 2 or Aperture. Exposure 2.0 may also be a plug-in for Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI.

Alien Skin offers a free download at Product Downloads , and video tutorials can be viewed at Alien Skin Tutorials.

PROS: Great job simulating different types of film quality.

CONS: Not available for Lightroom 2, or Aperture.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 with PowerPC or Intel processor (Adobe Photoshop CS2 9.0.2; Photoshop Elements 4.0.1; Fireworks CS3); Windows XP with Pentium 4 processor (Adobe Photoshop CS2; Photoshop Elements 4.0; Fireworks CS3; Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo XI)
Contact: www.alienskin.com
Cost: $249; $149 for upgrades

Alien Skin provides a Photo Bundle offering a range of plug-ins:

• Blow Up
• Bokeh
• Exposure
• Image Doctor
• Snap Art

Blow Up 2.0.3
Alien Skin recently released Blow Up 2.0.3. Blow Up is a one stop, Photoshop output plug-in. As expected from the name, Blow Up enlarges images. Blow Up also crops, shrinks, removes compression artifacts, and sharpens for output. This plug-in prepares an image for output on a monitor or as a print. Why use Blow Up? Blow Up provides a sharper enlargement than Photoshop CS4 when using the Image Size tool (Image -> Image Size).

New features for 2.0.3 include

• Running Blow Up from the Filter Menu
• Blow Up 2 Startup Panel for Photoshop CS4
• Gallery Wrap Panel for Photoshop CS4
• ISO paper sizes in the Settings Tab
• Performance slider.

Efficient Workflow
Providing quick and efficient access, Blow Up 2.0.3 can be opened from the Filter drop down menu, the Blow Up 2 Startup Panel, or the File -> Automate menu. Including Blow Up in the Filter drop down menu improves efficiency as all the photo workflow plug-ins are now in the same drop down menu. Blow Up can still be found in the File -> Automate menu, as found in previous Blow Up versions. The Automate menu also provides access to the Blow Up 2 Batch (new in version 2.0), which processes an entire folder of images.

Quick Draw – One Click Access
From the Photoshop desktop, the Blow Up panel provides one click access to Blow Up and a selection of pre-set size and media selections (screen choice, plus three paper selections for printing). Using the pre-sets saves time, since the image is processed without opening the user interface. However, if custom adjustments or cropping is desired, open Blow Up.

Clean, Easy Interface
Blow Up opens in an intuitive, clean, easy-to-use interface that provides intuitive defaults and the power of custom adjustments. This interface, by selecting “Settings”, provides a selection of factory default output settings based on output media and size. Custom settings can be saved and reused to enhance efficiency. After selecting “Controls” on the user interface, the default and custom settings can be adjusted with sliders.

Image Test
To test Blow Up’s image quality, two images were enlarged for this review. These two images were photos taken with a Nikon D200 (10 MP sensor). The selected images were cropped (reduces processing time on a Mac Pro G5) and then enlarged by 400 % (four times), using both Photoshop CS4 and Blow Up. In the Photoshop Image-> Image Size dialog, Resample Image was set to “Bicubic Smoother (best for enlargement)”. After enlargement, the images were cropped to 300 X 300 pixels. Two sets of images are presented below.

First Image Set

Photoshop image

Blow Up image

In this first set of images, Blow Up provides a crisper enlargement that preserves the well defined edges and metal luster. Note on the right side of the image, this improvement is particularly noticeable in the stainless steel rod (part of the standing ringing for a sailboat).

Second Image Set

Photoshop image

Blow Up image

In the second set of images (crocus with water drops), Blow Up’s improvement over Photoshop is visible, but not as obvious as in the first image set (sailboat rigging). From using Blow Up, the image improvement is easiest to see where the crocus petals overlap near the center of the image.

Additional comparison images may be found on the Alien Skin website at Alien Skin Examples, or on the Macworld Alien Skin Blow Up review: Alien Skin Blow Up 2.0.

Conclusion
Pros:

1. Blow Up is a great enlargement tool that uses a vector based enlargement algorithm that out performs Photoshop’s bicubic enlargement algorithm.
2. Blow Up does an excellent job of preserving well-defined edges during enlargement resulting in an obvious improvement over Photoshop. For softer edges, the improvement is subtle, but visible if you look for it.
3. Blow Up enhances workflow efficiency by combining output sharpening with enlargement.

Cons:

1. Only available as a Photoshop plug-in. For those that use Lightroom or Aperture, a plug-in compatible with these applications would save having to open or edit the image in Photoshop.

Examples and video demos are available at Alien Skin Tutorials. Download demo versions at Alien Skin Demos.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4.11, Windows XP
Contact: www.AlienSkin.com
Cost: $249; Free upgrade if you own Blow Up 2.0; $99.00 if upgrading from Blow Up 1.0