Microsoft Image composer for dummies Book

Introduction Why a ...For Dummies Book What You Need to Know to Get Started The Inside Story Part I: Meet the Maestro Part II: A Pile of Palettes Part III: Images in the Web Part IV: The Part of Tens Funky Margin Icons The Files I Refer To How to Contact Me Part I: Meet the Maestro Chapter 1: Introducing Image Composer Elementary Art A Child Prodigy Image Composer's Niche Chapter 2: Touring the Image Composer Interface It's Not Your Mother's Image Editor Your guide to composition A screenful o' sprites Try Out the Toolbox An Artist Needs a Palette Changing the Currently Selected Color Chapter 3: Setting Up Your Image Composer Environment Pixel This! Image resolution on PCs Setting the resolution of your monitor Setting the size of the composition space Colors on Computers Color in Windows Combining colors in channels Setting the background color of the composition space Zooming In and Out of the Workspace Chapter 4: The Sprite Story So What's a Sprite? Hauling 'Em In -- Inserting Sprites Inserting from a file Inserting from a PhotoCD Pasting from the Clipboard Dragging and dropping OLE! Creating from scratch Grabbing Hold of Your Sprites Saving Your Compositions and Sprites Saving a composition Saving selections as files What's the difference: File formats MIC format PSD format BMP format TGA format TIFF format JPEG format GIF format PNG format FlashPix format Picture It! format Part II: A Pile of Palettes Chapter 5: Getting Pushy with Sprites Cropping and Resizing Images Flipping and Aligning Images Ordering Sprites Grouping Sprites Flattening Groups Saving Places Chapter 6: A Tale of Two Palettes -- Shapes and Cutouts Basic Geometry Rectangles and circles Curves and polygons Drawing lines in the sand Making copies with the Lock tool Getting Fancy with Shapes -- The Cutout Palette Extracting with shapes Erasing with shapes Transparency in Shapes An Uplifting Experience Fine-tuning a selection Hue Whiteness Blackness Setting the Edge Local and Global selections Chapter 7: Painting without All the Mess I'm Painting, but Nothing Is Showing Up You Want Brushes? We've Got Brushes! Paintbrush Selection Grid Creating new brushes Brush Size and Opacity tools Brush Size Brush Opacity Brush Size Display A Garage Full of Tools Paintbrush Airbrush Pencil Continuous Strokes Painting over Picking your template The big smear Tinting, colorizing, and dodging and burning Rubber stamping Transferring shape Eraser Special effects The Lock tool Chapter 8: You Can't Tune a Fish, but You Can Tune a Color Working in True Color Working with a Custom Palette An Easier Way to Pick Colors The Color Tuning Palette Controlling colors Brightness Contrast Hue Saturation Bright highlights and dark shadows Home on the range Chapter 9: The Big Hand-Off: Transferring Textures Talking Sprite to Sprite Transferring shape Transferring fully Using glue to transfer shapes Snipping out shapes Tiling sprites Color mapping Intensity mapping Saturation mapping Transparency mapping Chapter 10: Putting the Word(s) Out The Text Palette Getting Rid of Fuzzy Text I Font to Be Alone Installing a TrueType font Types of fonts Fonts as art Special Text Effects Using WordArt Chapter 11: Effects at Your Fingertips Applying a Palette of Effects Voilà, You're a Picasso: The Painting Effects Charcoal without All the Dust Arts and Crafts Scratching the Surface Engaging in Distortion Basic Distortion Bulge effect Fisheye effect Mesa effect Vortex effect Radial Sweep effect Spoke Inversion effect Catching the wave Stretching and compressing with the Rectangular Distort effect Outlining the Details Only the Drop Shadow knows! Feeling a little edgy? Taking a little R&R: Recess and Relief Sort of Like a Coffee Filter Softening things up a bit Sharpening your senses Tracing an outline Awash with Color Fill'er Up Gradients Do You Have This in a Plaid? Chapter 12: Plugging In to Plug-Ins Instant Monet: The Impressionist Plug-In Demo derby Using Impressionist's built-in styles Even more controls... Custom brushes Making paper Saving settings Getting Psychedelic with KPT 3.0 Installing a third-party plug-in Using KPT Photo/Graphic Edges Eye Candy Unplugged: Plug-In Problems Part III: Images in the Web Chapter 13: Web Basic Training Tagging Images in HTML Adding ALT tags Adding height and width tags Adding LOWSRC tags Web File Formats Choosy designers choose GIF Browser-safe GIF palettes Optimizing palettes Advanced GIF Give me a J, give me a Peg PNG: The Next Generation Chapter 14: Creating Cool Web Effects Delving into Interface Design Me and My Shadow Baking Buttons Tweaking Text Images Raising text Recessing text Getting that neon glow Building Backgrounds and Tiles Tiling images Making your (water)marks Chapter 15: Creating Animation with Image Composer Animation Basics Microsoft GIF Animator Using Sprites as Animation Frames Animating Text Dithering Animation Getting Loopy Understanding the Undraw Method Using Transparency Chapter 16: Using Image Composer with FrontPage 98 and Visual InterDev Adding Images to FrontPage Web Projects Importing files Dragging and dropping Adding Images to Visual InterDev Projects Images on the Page: The FrontPage Editor The Image Properties Dialog Box General tab Image Source Type Alternative Representations Default Hyperlinks Video tab Appearance tab Adding Visual InterDev's Media Manager to Your System Making Media Manager folders Adding file annotations Star search: Finding your art Part IV: The Part of Tens Chapter 17: Ten Creative Digital Design Tips It's a Balancing Act Standout Subjects Keeping Everything in Proportion Moving Compositions -- Movement and Sequence These United Sprites Chapter 18: Ten Cool Design Sites on the Web The Image Composer Home Page The FrontPage Home Page The Visual InterDev Home Page Microsoft Typography The Sitebuilder Network Dummies Press Home Page Adobe Home Page Desktoppublishing.com New Media Publish Brian Johnson's Home Page Chapter 19: Ten Innovative Ways to Capture an Image Scan It Grab It Snap It PhotoCD It Buy It Chapter 20: Ten Great Graphics Tools Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop Caligari trueSpace CorelDRAW Corel PHOTO-PAINT MetaCreations Expression MetaCreations Painter Micrografx Designer Micrografx Picture Publisher Micrografx Simply 3D 2 Part V: About the CD Appendix Appendix: About the CD System Requirements How to Use the CD Using Microsoft Windows 95 What You'll Find Multimedia tutorials Image Composer example files Tryout versions of programs mentioned in the book Adobe Photoshop 4.0.1 Adobe Illustrator 7.0 Caligari trueSpace 3.0 MetaCreations Expression MetaCreations Kai's Power Tools 3.0 MetaCreations Painter 5 JASC Paint Shop Pro 4.14 Microsoft Internet Explorer software If You Have Problems (Of the CD Kind) Index License Agreement Installation Instructions Book Registration Information