Software Essentials for Graphic Designers

All over the world, the most widely-used graphic and web design programmes are: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Dreamweaver and Flash. Additionally, Adobe Acrobat is used in order to create PDF documents, usually from one of the page layout programmes mentioned above.

For the beginner, the manuals for all these programmes are daunting prospects. While all the information is in there, somewhere, it is difficult to separate the essential information from detail which even an experienced user may have never needed. Manuals are great reference tools, but they are NOT great learning tools.

Recognising this, Software Essentials focuses on each of these programmes in turn, taking the reader through a logical, step-by-step learning process covering the methods and techniques which would be required of them as working members of graphic and web design studios. By the end of each chapter, anyone – even a complete beginner – should feel confident and competent enough to use that programme in a professional situation.

The book concludes with an look at the pros and cons of CMS (Colour Management Settings), an increasingly important area to which many graphic designers have so far turned a blind eye. However, as their benefits – as well as the problems which are likely to arise through ignoring them – are here to stay, it is well worth understanding them in more detail.

The book is accompanied by a CD which includes tutorial movies and working examples (in the relevant file formats) based on the methods explained in the book.

Published by Laurence King Publishing Ltd in the UK (August 2006) and Yale University Press in the USA (October 2006).

Table of Contents/Synopsis