Lesa Snider King is on a mission to teach the world to create—and use—better graphics. She’s a stock photographer and chief evangelist for iStockphoto.com and founder of the creative tutorial site GraphicReporter.com. Lesa is the author of many video training titles including Graphic Secrets for Business Professionals (Lynda.com, 2007), From Photo to Graphic Art, and Practical Photoshop Elements (KelbyTraining.com, 2008). She writes regularly for Macworld magazine, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (www.photoshopuser.com), Elements Techniques (www.photoshopelementsuser.com), and Layers magazine. Lesa is also a corporate trainer and teaches at many industry conferences including Photoshop World, Macworld Expo, Mac Mania Cruises, and the esteemed Santa Fe Workshops.
You can catch her Graphics Tip of the Week live each Wednesday night on the Your Mac Life Internet radio show (www.yourmaclifeshow.com), which she also co-hosts with husband Shawn King. During her free time, you’ll find her carving the twisties on her sportbike or hanging with fellow Mac geeks. Lesa is a proud member of the BMWMOA, F800 Riders Club, DACS, NCMUG, Washington Apple Pi, and LiMac.
Dawn Frausto (editor) is assistant editor for the Missing Manual series. When not working, she likes rock climbing, playing soccer, and causing trouble. Email: dawn@oreilly.com.
Peter Meyers (editor) is the managing editor of O’Reilly Media’s Missing Manual series. He lives with his wife, daughter, and cats in New York City. Email: meyers@oreilly.com.
Nellie McKesson (production editor) lives in Jamaica Plain, Mass., where she makes t-shirts (http://mattsaundersbynellie.etsy.com/) and plays music with her band Dr. & Mrs. Van Der Trampp (http://myspace.com/drmrsvandertrampp/). Email: nellie@oreilly.com.
Carol Thoma (copy editor) has a PhD in English with a specialty in British Romantic poetry. After completing a 630-page dissertation on a biographer of Percy Bysshe Shelley named Thomas Jefferson Hogg, she contributed three articles on friends of Shelley to the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. She’s a huge fan of the Harry Potter series and a loyal supporter of King Richard III who enjoys spending her free time with her grandchildren.
Melissa Findley (technical reviewer) is a freelance digital artist and illustrator specializing in fantasy art. Her work has been featured in Ballistic Publishing’s Exotique 4, Art Scene International magazine, and Imagine FX. She also does book covers for Cobblestone Press. Melissa lives with her husband, tech writer John Welch, and stepson, Alex, in Tallahassee, FL. For more of her work visit her Web site: www.WickedFae.com.
Shangara Singh (technical reviewer) is a photographer and a heavy Photoshop and Lightroom user. He owns www.examaids.com and is the author of the popular Photoshop and Lightroom ACE Exam Aids—study guides for people who want to become Adobe Certified Experts. He also shoots stock and has his own stock photo Web site: www.mpxstockimages.com.
John C. Welch (technical reviewer) is an IT Manager for The Zimmerman Agency, freelance writer, and whatever else comes up. He’s contributed to multiple technical books on Mac OS X and co-written two. He’s a regular speaker at Macworld Conference & Expo on Mac IT issues, and lives in Tallahassee, FL with his wife, teenaged son, and two cats. He can be reached via his Web site: http://www.bynkii.com//.
This book is dedicated to the Greek god of wine, Bacchus, and all the brave little grapes who so valiantly sacrificed their lives so this book could be written. In vino veritas!
I’d like to express galactic thanks to iStockphoto.com for providing the beautiful imagery you see throughout this book. I truly believe an image is worth a thousand words, and thus made the screenshots as visually pleasing as possible. If you ever need high-quality, affordable images, iStockphoto.com is the way to go! A big hug and thanks go to David Pogue who got me involved in this project to begin with, and so graciously wrote the foreward of this book (while we were in disturbingly rough seas teaching on MacMania 8, no less). To Scott and Jeff Kelby for believing in me and nurturing my career in immeasurable ways throughout the last several years. To John “Bynkii” Welch for convincing me during our annual Macworld pub crawl that I should say yes to taking on this monstrous project should I be asked, and to Derrick Story for his wisdom and guidance before this book technically became my project, and my project alone. Also, a big fancy dinner and jugs of Umbrian vino rosso go to Pete Meyers and Dawn Frausto for editing this book and keeping me on track. Their input has made me a better writer and I will forever be grateful to them both.
You would not, however, be holding this book if it weren’t for Jeff Gamet, managing editor of MacObserver.com, Design-Tools.com, and author of Designers Guide to Mac OS X (Peachpit), who cleared his schedule to help meet the world’s ugliest deadline, and for staying up with me on iChat more nights than I can count (it’s all one big blur). Here’s to the Sugar-Free Red Bull and the Mozart station we made on Pandora.com that got us through the last of it! And when I ended up working straight through my Italian vacation, I’m really glad you kept me from jumping overboard while in the middle of the Mediterranean. In hindsight, I shudder to think of all the shopping in Firenze I would have missed.
Special thanks to Richard Harrington (www.photoshopforvideo.com) for his help on video layers and the Actions chapter, to Taz Tally (http://taztallyphotography.com/) for helping with the Photoshop and Print chapter, to Marcus Conge (www.digitalmanipulation.com) and Bert Monroy (www.bertmonroy.com) for their help with all things 3D and vector-related, and to the wonderfully brilliant Veronica Hanley who sacrificed two days at sea in order to make the vector chapter make sense! To Melissa Findley (www.wickedeye.com) for her superb guidance on the Painting in Photoshop chapter, and to photographer extraordinaire, Tony Corbell (www.corbellproductions.com), for his guidance on the plug-ins chapter (meet you at the Inn of the Anasazi in Santa Fe next year!).
To my esteemed colleagues—and good friends—Taz (again!), Ben Willmore, Trevor Perry, Terry White, Dave Cross, Jack Davis, Kevin Ames, and Jay Nelson who all expressed how very proud of me they are and who each, in their own special way, convinced me I could survive writing a book of this magnitude.
To all my friends who continually gave their support when I needed it the most: Pat Fauquet, Jean MacDonald, Sly Marton, Kirk Aplin, George Canellis, Loren Finkelstein, Lorene Romero, Leslie Hollis, Maurice Shevalier, Leslie Raguso, Kathryn Kroll, and Tiffani Barnes. And to the best mama a girl could have, Fran Snider, who sat on the phone with me while I cried tears of stress more nights than I care to admit.
And finally, many thanks go to my husband, Shawn King, who kept the house stocked with food and who forced me away from my Mac to climb onto my beloved bike, Saphira, for a much needed break now and then. I can’t believe you didn’t strangle me when I bit your head off so many times, and I’m amazed at how you rigged wireless Internet access in our Umbrian farmhouse so I could send off the last few files. Thanks for putting up with me! I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.
—Lesa Snider King
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