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Jumat, 02 November 2012

iPad

iPad: The Missing Manual





Apple’s third-generation iPad has a new, razor-sharp Retina display and a robust processor that will dazzle you with their looks and speed, but you won’t get far without an owner’s manual to all the tablet’s features. This comprehensive guide shows you how to transfer media to your iPad, sync and shop wirelessly, tap into WiFi and 4G cellular networks, and use iTunes for media management.

The important stuff you need to know:

  • Build your media library. Fill your iPad with music, photos, movies, TV shows, games, eBooks, and more.
  • Sync wirelessly. Keep your iPad’s apps, media, and email messages current without cabling up.
  • Capture stunning images. Take photos and HD video with the tablet’s new 5 megapixel iSight camera.
  • Get online. Connect via WiFi or the blazing-fast 4G LTE cellular network—and create a free Wi-Fi hotspot with Verizon’s iPad.
  • Take dictation. “Speak” email messages and notes, and have the iPad type them up.



Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition

Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students





Our all time best selling book is now available in a revised and expanded second edition. Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication, from the printed page to the computer screen. This revised edition includes forty-eight pages of new content, including the latest information on style sheets for print and the web, the use of ornaments and captions, lining and non-lining numerals, the use of small caps and enlarged capitals, as well as information on captions, font licensing, mixing typefaces, and hand lettering. Throughout the book, visual examples show how to be inventive within systems of typographic form—what the rules are and how to break them. Thinking with Type is a type book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, and anyone else who works with words. The popular online companion to Thinking with Type (www.thinkingwithtype.com) has been revised to reflect the new material in the second edition.


Cupcakes and Cashmere

Cupcakes and Cashmere: A Guide for Defining Your Style, Reinventing Your Space, and Entertaining with Ease





Based on Emily Schuman’s popular lifestyle blog of the same name, Cupcakes and Cashmere is the must-have guide for those looking to establish their own sense of style, organize and decorate their home, or throw an easy and stylish party. Organized by season, the book expands on Schuman’s blog by including DIY projects, organization tips, party-planning ideas, beauty how-tos, and seasonal recipes. Cupcakes and Cashmere features original material that has not been previously published on the site. With her signature photographic layouts, Emily creates a lifestyle that is chic and achievable for every reader, making this the ultimate style guide for living a fashionable life.

Praise for Cupcakes and Cashmere:

“Inspiration for anyone looking to update her wardrobe, decorate her home, or throw a fab party.” —Shape magazine




Tiny Homes

Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter





There's a grassroots movement in tiny homes these days. The real estate collapse, the economic downturn, burning out on 12-hour workdays -- many people are rethinking their ideas about shelter -- seeking an alternative to high rents, or a lifelong mortgage debt to a bank on an overpriced home.

In this book are some 150 builders who have taken things into their own hands, creating tiny homes (under 500 sq. ft.). Homes on land, homes on wheels, homes on the road, homes on water, even homes in the trees. There are also studios, saunas, garden sheds, and greenhouses.

There are 1,300 photos, showing a rich variety of small homemade shelters, and there are stories (and thoughts and inspirations) of the owner-builders who are on the forefront of this new trend in downsizing and self-sufficiency.

At the heart of our 1973 book Shelter were drawings of 5 small buildings, which we recommended as a starting point in providing one's own home. Now, almost 40 years later, there's a growing tiny house movement all over the world -- which we've been tracking over the past two years.

Many people have decided to scale back, to get by with less stuff, to live in smaller homes. You can buy a   ready-made tiny home, build your own, get a kit or pre-fab, or live in a bus, houseboat, or other movable shelter. Some cities have special ordinances for building "inlaw" or "granny flats" in the back yard. There are innovative solutions in cities, such as the "capsules" in Tokyo. There are numerous blogs and websites with news, photos, and/or plans for tiny homes, documented here.

If you're thinking of scaling back, you'll find plenty of inspiration here. Here's a different approach, a 180ยบ turn from increasing consumption. Here are builders, designers, architects (no less), dreamers, artists, road gypsies, and water dwellers who've achieved a measure of freedom and independence by taking shelter into their own hands.



Extraordinary Everyday Photography

Extraordinary Everyday Photography: Awaken Your Vision to Create Stunning Images Wherever You Are





Get inspired to discover the beautiful images around you

Photographers are born travelers. They’ll go any distance to capture the right light, beautiful landscapes, wildlife, and people. But exotic locales aren’t necessary for interesting photographs. Wonderful images are hiding almost everywhere; you just need to know how to find them.

Extraordinary Everyday Photography
will help you search beyond the surface to find the unexpected wherever you are, be it a downtown street, a local park, or your own front lawn. Authors Brenda Tharp and Jed Manwaring encourage amateur photographers to slow down, open their eyes, and respond to what they see to create compelling images that aren’t overworked. Through accessible discussions and exercises, readers learn to use composition, available light, color, and point of view to create stunning photographs in any environment. Inspiring photo examples from the authors, taken with DSLRs, compact digital cameras, and even iPhones, show that it is the photographer's eye and creative vision--not the gear--that make a great image.


The Art and Making of Hotel Transylvania

The Art and Making of Hotel Transylvania





The Art and Making of Hotel Transylvania brings to (undead) life a fresh new spin on the classic horror monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, Werewolf, and the Invisible Man from Sony Pictures Animation and director Genndy Tartakovsky - creator of Samurai Jack and executive producer and director of Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series.

The story features Dracula, owner of a lavish five-stake resort hotel for monsters, away from the human world. On one special weekend, he invites some of the world's most famous monsters to celebrate his daughter's 118th birthday. For Drac, catering to all these monsters is no problem, but his world could come crashing down when one ordinary guy stumbles into the hotel and takes a shine to his daughter, Mavis.

Featuring over 400 pieces of concept art, character sketches, storyboards and digital art, along with interviews with key filmmakers and crew, this full-color book is truly a spooky but fun treat for the eyes!


The Queen's Diamonds

The Queen's Diamonds





The splendor and sparkle of the diamond is unmatched by that of any other gem in the world. As status symbols or emblems of endless love, diamonds have been worn, collected, and presented as lavish gifts since the earliest days of antiquity. Today, steady sales—and borrowed baubles on the arms of starlets—indicate that diamonds remain among the most sought-after gemstones. But few, if any, private collections surpass that of Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen’s Diamonds takes readers on a tour of the magnificent royal inheritance of diamonds from Queen Adelaide in the 1830s to the present day. The book features more than seventy awe-inspiring pieces of jewelry from one of the finest collections in the world. With three hundred full-color photographs—many newly commissioned for the book—the dazzling display ranges from the flawless pink diamond presented to Princess Elizabeth, as she was then known, for her wedding in 1947 to nineteenth-century diamond diadems to the Cartier “Halo” tiara worn most recently by The Duchess of Cambridge at her wedding in April 2011. As informative as it is stunningly beautiful, the book includes information on many items of international importance and great historic significance.
 
Published on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, The Queen’s Diamonds offers the first authorized account of this iconic and unparalleled collection of diamond jewelry. The photos superbly encapsulate the breathtaking beauty of the subjects, and the descriptions are packed with fascinating details.

 





Diane Keaton: House





A luxurious, graphically compelling vision for contemporary domestic living, as observed and artfully presented by the Oscar-winning film star. House is Diane Keaton’s stunning portrayal of the way we may and do live now, in rusticated, reimagined, or repurposed spaces across the country. Inventive designers, including Annabelle Selldorf, Roy McMakin, Rick Joy, and Tom Kundig, have brought their talents to bear upon the structurally old, the disused, and the antiquated, finding in these buildings the hidden beauty that lies beneath the surface of neglect and decay, and through their work revealing to us the many possibilities we might bring to our own domestic spaces.Through innovative design and repurposing, industrial structures and farm buildings, crumbling commercial lofts and rusting hangars are transformed and vividly revealed as thoroughly engaging spaces for living. House presents a graphically striking vision, frequently marked by strong geometries and primal coloration, that ignites the imagination of those intent upon redefining the possible as it pertains to one’s space—work that is joyous and rooted in our most basic understandings of home.


Life in Color

Life in Color: National Geographic Photographs





Life in Color is arranged by color in a rainbow of beauty. Each chapter, devoted to a color, begins with a short, inspiring essay that explores the qualities, meaning, and symbolism of that color, written in the same warm and lovely voice that guided the reader through Visions of Earth. Color chapters include photographs that are predominantly blue, orange, green, yellow, purple and red. Smaller sections present images in silver, brown, black, gold, white, and "unseen color"--not seen with the naked eye, such as laser, the universe, and microscopic images. Throughout, interesting quotes and surprising short insights in the captions give the reader an entirely new look at the color in the world around us. Chock full of beautiful, amazing, fun images, this eye-pleasing volume is sure to appeal to a wide variety of people, most especially to women.

A Look Inside Life in Color

Amager Beach, Denmark
Amager Beach, Denmark. Still waters lit by sunset surround three boulders.(Photo by Zoran Djekic/National Geographic My Shot p. 40-41)
Montparnasse, Paris, France
(Photo by Laurent Hunziker/National Geographic My Shot p. 174-175)
Abbiategrasso, Italy
Abbiategrasso, Italy. Dusk decorates an ancient fortress near Milan with color. (Photo by Roberto Pagani/National Geographic My Shot p. 348-349)



Mixing Secrets in the small studio

Mixing Secrets in the small studio





Discover how to achieve release-quality mixes even in the smallest studios by applying power-user techniques from the world's most successful producers.

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio is a down-to-earth primer for small-studio enthusiasts who want chart-ready sonics in a hurry. Drawing on the back-room strategies of more than 100 famous names, this entertaining guide leads you step-by-step through the entire mixing process. On the way, you'll unravel the mysteries of every type of mix processing, from simple EQ and compression through to advanced spectral dynamics and "fairy dust" effects. User-friendly explanations introduce technical concepts on a strictly need-to-know basis, while chapter summaries and assignments are perfect for school and college use.

  • Learn the subtle editing, arrangement, and monitoring tactics which give industry insiders their competitive edge, and master the psychological tricks which protect you from all the biggest rookie mistakes.
  • Find out where you don't need to spend money, as well as how to make a limited budget really count.
  • Pick up tricks and tips from leading-edge engineers working on today's multi-platinum hits, including Michael Brauer, Serban Ghenea, the Lord-Alge brothers, Tony Maserati, Manny Marroquin, Dave "Hard Drive" Pensado, Jack Joseph Puig, Mark "Spike" Stent, Phil Tan, Andy Wallace, and many, many more . . .

Amazon Exclusive: A Letter from Mike Senior on Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, "The 'Why The Hell' Challenge"

Mike Senior

Whenever I read anything about mixing, my first question is this: why the hell should I believe what this person's saying?

It would therefore be daft of me to expect any better treatment. So why should you believe me when I say that you can create commercial-grade mixes in a typical small home/college studio?

My first answer to this question is that you can judge for yourself, with your own ears, because dozens of my mixes for Sound On Sound magazine's popular "Mix Rescue" column are available free online--there's a taster of some of them on this very page, and lots more available on my own webpage. In all these cases I've started with real-world small-studio recordings and used widely available mass-market technology to remix it to a commercial level, all without ever setting foot inside a "real" studio. Go on, take a listen. If you want that kind of transformation for your music, then you can find a detailed explanation of my method in Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio.

The second reason you might want to take notice of these mixing techniques, though, is that they've been drawn not only from my own professional experience, but also from more than four million words of first-hand interviews with the highest-profile engineers and producers on the planet. Whatever you think of my personal advice, it's a bit trickier to dismiss the opinions of 100 of the studio industry's biggest names.

But at the end of the day it's your call: does Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio pass your own "why the hell" test? You might just find that it's the only mixing book on the market that actually does . . .

--Mike Senior



Amazon Exclusive: Top Ten Small-Studio Myths--Busted

Amongst many other things in Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio, I try to deliver a stout kicking to the following questionable (but surprisingly pervasive) pieces of received wisdom:

You need high-end gear to create commercial-grade mixes.

While great gear makes mixing quicker and easier, it's not a deal-breaker. To demonstrate this, I deliberately do all my "Mix Rescue" remixes for Sound On Sound magazine on budget gear in small home/college studios. In some cases, I've even restricted myself to the DAW's built-in plug-ins too--as Greg Kurstin did when mixing Lily Allen's hit record The Fear. If you won’t take my word for it, though, here's top producer Frank Filipetti: "Your ears, your mind, your musical abilities are what it’s all about. Put a George Massenburg, a Hugh Padgham, a Kevin Killen together with any kind of gear, and you’ll get a great-sounding record.” Tony Visconti is one of many others who back him up: “I’ve heard people make very bad records on expensive gear. The gear does not dictate the quality. It’s how you use it.” So I’m afraid that if your mix sucks, your mixing technique sucks. No two ways about it.

Use the speakers with the flattest frequency response.

This isn't actually the most important thing when working under budget constraints, because your ear can adapt to a speaker's frequency balance quite readily. When you've not got much money to buy monitors for mixing, a flat frequency response is much less critical than good time-domain response. Indeed, the two most celebrated mixing speakers of all time, the Yamaha NS10 and the Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube, both have extremely uneven frequency-response plots, but excellent time-domain performance.

Trust your ears.

They may be all you've got to hear with, but if you're going to achieve pro-standard mixes then you should trust your ears about as far as you can stretch them! They will lie to you at every opportunity if you give them half a chance, and you need to stay vigilant to avoid being caught out. Ever had that "morning after" horror of realizing that last night’s great-sounding mix actually sounds like a wasp in a tin? Or have you ever carefully adjusted a mix effect for five minutes before realizing the stupid thing isn't actually plugged in? Those common experiences are just the tip of the iceberg, and it's only by learning to work around the fickleness of your own hearing that you can begin to get decent mix results reliably.

Timing/tuning-correction kills the music!

Corrective processing can certainly produce unmusical results, but it's important to realize that it doesn't have to, even if you're just using the editing facilities built into your software DAW. Furthermore, almost every small-studio production I've worked on sounded more musical (and became a lot easier to mix) once careful timing and tuning correction had been applied. And I've yet to have a single client complain about it either!

Start your mix with the drums.

That might work with some mixes, but it's often not the best decision. For example, in a lot of styles you actually want to give the lead vocals the biggest "wow" factor, sonically speaking. In that case, it's much better to start with those while your ears are fresh, and while you've still got lots of mix real estate and computer CPU power to play with.

Try to make every instrument sound its best.

This can be a recipe for disaster at mixdown. The moment you put two instruments together, each will inevitably compromise the quality of the other, and mixing is not just about deciding which instruments need to sound best--it's also about deciding which can afford to sound less good. You may need to make some parts of your mix sound worse in order to make your all-important lead vocal sound better, for instance. As producer John Leckie puts it: "You can’t have spectacular everything--then you wonder why the mix doesn’t sound any good, because everything’s crowding everything else. When you solo the instruments, everything sounds good, but when it’s all put together it’s a jumbled-up mess, so something’s got to give way.”

Reverb has to sound natural.

Wrong. Although realistic-sounding room simulation has its place in many mixes, there's a whole lot more to using reverb effects than that. Even the dodgiest-sounding reverb unit can prove extremely handy when enhancing an instrument's tone/decay characteristics, or stereo image. In fact, a lot of the established classic reverb units sound pretty unnatural (the AMS RMX16, say, or the EMT 140 plate), but that doesn't stop them from appearing all over the current charts.

Perhaps it just needs professional mastering? (If only I had the Celestial Systems Mix Perfectizer plug-in!)

I call this the "silver bullet" myth--that comforting delusion that the only thing separating your mix from the ones you hear on the radio is some single esoteric process. Well, here's some news: I've heard thousands of real small-studio mixes, as well as remixing dozens of them for "Mix Rescue," and whenever I hear someone utter the silver bullet myth, it’s never, ever a single "magic ingredient" that their mix actually needs! The malaise can almost always be traced to a whole selection of minor misjudgments that have been made at various points in the arrangement, editing, and mixing process. In other words, if you improve your basic mixing technique, the "fairy dust" will look after itself.

But you just can't do that!

In mixing the end justifies the means. Whatever you're given to work from, the bottom line is that you're expected to turn it into something that sounds like a finished record. It doesn't matter if you have to replace the drums with samples, stuff synth pads between the guitar layers, add new backing vocals, or remove certain instruments entirely--just as long as your final product sounds great enough to make the client a happy bunny.

Professionals don't make mistakes.

Rubbish. Professionals make mistakes like everyone else, but they turn them to their advantage. “You’re going to make mistakes,” says Humberto Gatica. “The important thing is to learn from them.” Mixing in particular is one long experiment, in which mistakes play a vital role by identifying any mixing tactics that are unsuitable for the job at hand. For this reason professional engineers at the highest level will cheerfully scrap a mix completely and redo it. “I will often restart mixes three or four times,” reveals Fabian Marasciullo. “Put everything back to zero and try again, re-blend and EQ everything.” Justin Niebank doesn't think twice about heading back to the drawing board either: "I’m not afraid to pull all the faders back down again if it doesn’t work. That’s too great a hurdle for many engineers: but if necessary, don’t get precious, and start over."





Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Piano (Book & DVD) (Teach Yourself Series)




  • Book & DVD
  • By Morton Manus, Willard A. Palmer, and Thomas Palmer
  • Format Book & DVD

Everything you need to know to start playing now! Whether you're a beginner with no prior musical training, or you ""used to play"" and are need of a refresher course, Alfred's Teach Yourself to Play Piano is the perfect resource to teach yourself piano, even though you have never taken a lesson. Complete with on-screen scrolling music, MP3 play-along tracks for every example, and iPod
*-compatible video files, you will master how to make rhythms made simple, how to form the most important chords, techniques for playing with feeling and expression, and so much more. Upon completing Teach Yourself to Play Piano, you will be able to play in pop, blues, classical, folk, hymns, spirituals, and ragtime styles. The DVD includes exciting arrangements of The Entertainer and Amazing Grace, and sets the stage for a life-long relationship with music and playing the piano.


Audubon Engagement Calendar 2013

Audubon Engagement Calendar 2013





This perennial bestseller, a week-at-a-glance datebook, celebrates nature in all its diversity and splendor. Captured by the world's best nature photographers, the pictures include vast landscapes, finely detailed close-ups, and a Great White Egret, displaying in a tree. Plus mystic canyons, majestic trees and pristine rivers, a pair of giraffes on the savanna, and a mother bird feeding her young. With detailed, informative captions and spacious grids, the calendar is elegantly packaged for gift-giving.


Lighting for Digital Photography

Lighting for Digital Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots (Using Flash and Natural Light for Portrait, Still Life, Action, and Product Photography)





Now that you’ve had your DSLR for a while, are you ready to take a much closer look at what creating a great image is all about? It’s all about light! The ability to see, influence, modify, control, and create light will take your images from snapshots to great shots!

In Lighting for Digital Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots, photographer and bestselling author Syl Arena begins with a primer on light itself—how to see its direction, intensity, color, contrast, and hardness—and quickly moves on to discussions of shooting both indoors and outdoors in the many different conditions of natural or man-made light. Then the book digs in to begin creating light with photographic lights, whether that’s small flash or big strobe, the pop-up flash on your DSLR or continuous lights.

Follow along with Syl and you will:
  • Learn the basics (and beyond) of light modifiers that make light bigger and softer, such as umbrellas, softboxes, beauty dishes, and diffusion panels
  • Understand how to control and shape the light itself with flags, grids, snoots, and the zoom function on your flash
  • Appreciate the color temperature of light (whether that’s the sun, a light bulb, or a flash), and how to influence it with white balance settings on your camera and colored gels on your flash
  • Learn how to take great pictures across many different genres, from product and still life images, to simple (and not so simple) portraits and group shots

With Lighting for Digital Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots, you’ll learn not only how light behaves—you’ll learn all you need to know to get started on the journey of creating and controlling light in order to make great shots. And once you’ve got the shot, show it off! Join the book’s Flickr group, share your photos, and discuss how you get great shots at flickr.com/groups/lightingfromsnapshotstogreatshots.


Adobe Photoshop CS6 for Photographers

Adobe Photoshop CS6 for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC





Renowned Photographer and Photoshop hall-of-famer, Martin Evening returns with his comprehensive guide to Photoshop. This acclaimed work covers everything from the core aspects of working in Photoshop to advanced techniques for refined workflows and professional results. Using concise advice, clear instruction and real world examples, this essential guide will give you the skills, regardless of your experience, to create professional quality results. A robust accompanying website features sample images, tutorial videos, bonus chapters and a plethora of extra resources. Quite simply, this is the essential reference for photographers of all levels using Photoshop.

* All the skills you need for superb photographic results using Photoshop

* Fully revised accompanying website featuring sample images, tutorial videos and addition bonus chapters

* Packed with professional examples, step-by-step tutorials, and over 750 color images

* Binding may not completely cover pages




Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid

Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid: Your Path to Building an Energy-Independent Home





Prefabrication offers a simple path to the green home of your dreams, and in her latest book, Prefabulous author Sheri Koones highlights the many ways of using prefabrication to create almost-off-the-grid homes—houses that are not only environmentally friendly but often operate at nearly zero annual energy cost.
Taking energy from the grid when necessary and returning any excess energy produced, almost-off-the-grid homes function on a fraction of the energy required by most houses, and additionally are more comfortable, healthier, quieter inside, and far cheaper to operate. As energy costs continue to rise, the almost-off-the-grid house proves its worth.
Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid profiles more than 30 of the most energy-efficient homes in the United States, and this hardworking guide reveals how homeowners can achieve similar results with floor plans, the latest, most efficient technologies, and multiple images of the exterior and interior of each home.

Praise for Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid:

“You can build a high quality, environmentally friendly and efficient home at a reasonable price with a look and feel of a traditional home. Advancements like those used in our house and the other houses in this book will transform the homebuilding industry.” —Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

“The time has come to throw out the old stereotypes and to embrace prefab building techniques as the way of the future—and the best approach for today. For anyone wanting to create a house that’s sustainable in every sense of the word, this book is an excellent place to start.” —Sarah Susanka, architect and author of The Not So Big House series

“I'm passionate about prefab because I know that it can spark an incredibly positive change in the building industry and dramatically reduce costs and construction duration. Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid is an enlightening guide on using prefab to create your own affordable, energy-efficient home.” —Bruce Ratner, chairman and chief executive of the Forest City Ratner Companies

“Sheri Koones highlights the many ways of using prefabrication to create almost-off-the-grid homes that are not only environmentally friendly but often operate at nearly zero annual energy cost. . . . This is an easy-on-the-eyes guide that includes floor plans and multiple images of the exterior and interior of each home. It is not a manual for green construction, but a general overview of aspects of prefab and green construction. And it does that well.” —Natural Life magazine

“If you’re ready to do something about your energy dependence, or if you enjoy stories of people who’ve bucked the trends, you owe it to yourself to give Prefabulous + Almost Off the Grid a look. Beautifully illustrated, it ends with a great resources list for the homes showcased.” —Examiner.com

“Indispensable guide to creating the ideal, almost-off-the-grid home. . . . This text is both timely and tempting to anyone interested in inhabiting a more comfortable and cost-efficient abode.” —Bask

“This attractive coffee-table-style book, the third in Koones’s Prefabulous series, features 32 prefabricated houses that, to a greater or lesser extent, boast environmentally friendly, efficient, and renewable-energy elements.” —Publishers Weekly




The Art of Rise of the Guardians (The Art of Dreamworks)

The Art of Rise of the Guardians (The Art of Dreamworks)





In Rise of the Guardians, North (Alec Baldwin), Bunnymund (Hugh Jackman), Tooth (Isla Fisher), and Sandman try to recruit the mysterious Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to help them stop Pitch (Jude Law) from putting an end to childhood belief and sending the world into eternal darkness.

Rise of the Guardians is one of DreamWorks Animation’s most ambitious films to date, allowing families to get to know the icons of childhood in a whole new way. Its mythic premise provided the artists at the studio with an opportunity to let their imaginations soar, producing a truly unique take on the imaginary figures of childhood and the innocence and joy they represent. The Art of Rise of the Guardians is a fascinating look at the ways these artists and craftspeople collaborated to create a stunning CG movie in 3D that will change the way we look at childhood.




Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers, The





Adobe Photoshop Lightroom was designed from the ground up with digital photographers in mind, offering powerful editing features in a streamlined interface that lets photographers import, sort, and organize images. This completely updated bestseller was also written with photographers in mind. Author Martin Evening describes features in Lightroom 4 in detail from a photographer’s perspective. As an established commercial and fashion photographer, Martin knows firsthand what photographers need for an efficient workflow. He has also been working with Lightroom from the beginning, monitoring the product’s development and providing valued feedback to Adobe. As a result, Martin knows the software inside and out, from image selection to image editing to image management. In this book you’ll learn how to:

• Work efficiently with images shot in the raw or JPEG format

• Import photographs with ease and sort them according to your workflow

• Create and manage a personal image library

• Apply tonal adjustments to multiple images quickly

• Integrate Lightroom with Adobe Photoshop

• Export images for print or Web as digital contact sheets or personal portfolios

• Make the most of new features in Lightroom 4, such as the Camera Raw Process 2012 Basic panel tone controls

Photographers will find Lightroom 4–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book–indispensable tools in their digital darkrooms.

This book’s companion site, www.thelightroombook.com, offers video tutorials, articles, sample images, and updates from author Martin Evening.


“With Martin’s expert guidance, you’ll soon find that you have precisely the tools you need to turn your concentration back where it belongs–on making better pictures!”

–George Jardine, digital photography consultant

 “As a photographer himself, Martin Evening knows what tools photographers need to realize their creative vision. In this book, he shows not only how Adobe Photoshop Lightroom works but also why it will become an essential part of any photographer’s workflow.”

–Greg Gorman, photographer



Amazon.com Exclusive: Bonus Content from Martin Evening, Author of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book

Click photo for excerpt



Interview with Martin Evening, author of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book
Using the HSL controls to reduce gamut clipping [pdf]




RGB Curves [pdf]
Correcting an underexposed image [pdf]
The Map module and Navigation [pdf]





Sierra Club 2013 Wilderness Calendar

Sierra Club 2013 Wilderness Calendar





With nearly 10 million copies sold, the Sierra Club wall calendar is a perennial favorite. The 2013 edition is, as always, the definitive one of its type, with dramatic and awe-inspiring color photographs of wild places all across the country, from Oregon to Minnesota to South Carolina, taken by world-renowned nature photographers.


Sorolla

Sorolla: The Masterworks





A new survey of the best works by the elusive and spectacular Spanish Impressionist Joaquรญn Sorolla. Often compared to his contemporary, the American artist John Singer Sargent, Joaquรญn Sorolla (1863–1923) was a master draftsman and painter of landscapes, formal portraits, and monumental, historically themed canvases. Highly influenced by French Impressionism, the Valencian artist was a master plein-air painter known for his luminous seaside scenes of frolicking youths and for vivid depictions of Spanish rural life and its pleasures and customs. This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla’s major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the foremost authority on the artist. Benefiting from close proximity to the artist and his personal archives, she presents an in-depth essay that explores Sorolla’s life, work, and remarkable international legacy. With virtually all of the artist’s previous publications now out of print, this much-anticipated volume is an important addition to the literature on this great Spanish master.


The Age of Insight

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present





A brilliant book by Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel, The Age of Insight takes us to Vienna 1900, where leaders in science, medicine, and art began a revolution that changed forever how we think about the human mind—our conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions—and how mind and brain relate to art.
 
At the turn of the century, Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe. Artists and scientists met in glittering salons, where they freely exchanged ideas that led to revolutionary breakthroughs in psychology, brain science, literature, and art. Kandel takes us into the world of Vienna to trace, in rich and rewarding detail, the ideas and advances made then, and their enduring influence today.
 
The Vienna School of Medicine led the way with its realization that truth lies hidden beneath the surface. That principle infused Viennese culture and strongly influenced the other pioneers of Vienna 1900. Sigmund Freud shocked the world with his insights into how our everyday unconscious aggressive and erotic desires are repressed and disguised in symbols, dreams, and behavior. Arthur Schnitzler revealed women’s unconscious sexuality in his novels through his innovative use of the interior monologue. Gustav Klimt, Oscar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele created startlingly evocative and honest portraits that expressed unconscious lust, desire, anxiety, and the fear of death.
 
Kandel tells the story of how these pioneers—Freud, Schnitzler, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele—inspired by the Vienna School of Medicine, in turn influenced the founders of the Vienna School of Art History to ask pivotal questions such as What does the viewer bring to a work of art? How does the beholder respond to it? These questions prompted new and ongoing discoveries in psychology and brain biology, leading to revelations about how we see and perceive, how we think and feel, and how we respond to and create works of art. Kandel, one of the leading scientific thinkers of our time, places these five innovators in the context of today’s cutting-edge science and gives us a new understanding of the modernist art of Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele, as well as the school of thought of Freud and Schnitzler. Reinvigorating the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna 1900, The Age of Insight is a wonderfully written, superbly researched, and beautifully illustrated book that also provides a foundation for future work in neuroscience and the humanities. It is an extraordinary book from an international leader in neuroscience and intellectual history.


Creative Illustration

Creative Illustration





During his career as one of America's most sought-after illustrators, Andrew Loomis (1889-1959) taught at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and in 1939 he codified his lessons in his first manual, Fun with a Pencil. Four years later it had already been through six printings, and he followed up over the next two decades with a series of even more successful how-to books that remain the gold standard for artists to this day.

Creative Illustration is considered Loomis's magnum opus, which was aimed primarily at the professional-level illustrator. Divided into seven sections: Line, Tone, Color, Telling the Story, Creating Ideas, Fields of Illustration, and Experimenting and Studies, this book is filled with instructions, tips, insider experiences, and incredible illustrations.



Complete Color Coded Flash Cards for All Beginning Music Students




  • Flash Cards Pages: 89
  • Format Flash Cards

Includes all notes, symbols and terms needed for the first two years of study on any musical instrument. Cards are color-coded by category and are numbered on the back.