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Secrets of Digital Photography Nikon eBook FAQ Page |
This is a new type of camera accessory. Designed from the ground up to be one of the most value-rich accessories one could acquire, it is an absolutely perfect match to the Nikon CP950 / 990 / 995 / 775 / 5000/4500/5700/5400 cameras and is a 90% match to the CP880, 885, and 4300 cameras.
The eBooks are shipping and the customers are smiling.
Just the FAQ's, man...
The eProduction:
Mastering Nikon Compact Digital Cameras
the high-resolution Photography eBook
by Peter iNovaVersion 6
Now Shipping
Reviewers enthusiastically recommend it to the wider audience of digital camera owners, too.
It is a high-resolution eBook and it takes you on a journey different from any photo book you've ever seen.
An eBook is a book that goes into your computer.
You read it there the way you read a web page, only with greater clarity, interaction and flexibility. If you want, you can print sections out in B&W or color.
It comes as a series of PDF files --but don't mistake these for the kind you download off the Internet. These are the ultimate in sharpness and image quality.
Advantages:
- Better images than a printed book. Better typography than the Internet.
- Instant interactivity. Scale scale pages to the size you feel like viewing.
- Preview all the other pages without leaving the one you are on.
- Internet-direct access from a huge resource in the Appendix.
You can see what's in the chapters here. or read the Foreword/Forward here. Drop in on a sample page here. Then check out what people have been saying about it here.
Note: This isn't an eBook for one of the several portable eBook reader devices. It's way beyond mere text and low-resolution images. This one runs on your computer with Adobe Acrobat™ 4.0, 5.0 or 6.0 all of which are included for convenience, making the whole thing self-contained, interactive, easy to browse and above the image quality of a paper printed book.
Macintosh and Windows computers are supported. And since it is a PDF file, you can read it on Unix and Linux, too. Adobe has versions of Acrobat for everybody.
About the High Resolution thing. Most people are used to seeing a PDF file on their computer as a rich-text / poor-image compromise. I have a different approach. The PDF files here are just as rich in the photos as they are in the printed text. You can blow up the images to 400%, or more, on your computer screen and still NOT run out of pixels! That's like pushing your face WAY into a book. About like holding a book four inches from your face or viewing through a giant perfectly focused magnifying glass! And there is NO dot-screen to compromise the images. Get a taste of the pages here.
There are even a High Resolution and an Ultra High Resolution interactive version of the book so you can decide on speed vs. detail as you read. (Note that this original feature has begun to be copied by other eBook makers!)
Pricing: The book is $49.95. It contains 513 pages. Over 1600 images and illustrations. Over 400 iNovaFX Photoshop Action Filters. Tryout full versions of Photoshop 6, Test Strip 3.1, Panorama Tools, PhotoRescue and much more.
Format: The book is packaged in the same size CD holder most often seen for DVD's. It's a rugged, durable case that holds the CD with a very nice 3-point push button center clip and has an integrated system that holds any paperwork, receipts, model releases, notes or print-outs that will fit in its 5 x 7 inch document bay.
The package gives the book the substantial feel of something larger than a CD jewel box and includes the CD media and a booklet of useful items for fast reference. "Shooting for Effect" gives you pointers in shooting for optimized use of the iNovaFX filters and ways to extend your eBook beyond its physical borders.
Extending the packaging usefulness is the Dual Use Cover. One side is the "dust jacket", the cover as in the illustration above. But the other side is what is really cool. It's an instantly implemented array of test charts and software filters for the user to employ with the white balance feature of the camera. The full-color cover sits under a protective skin of clear plastic allowing the filter and reference features to be used directly.
The case's durable plastic body protects the CD and even serves as a repository for paperwork such as model releases for the photographer. (An appropriately-sized model release form is included on the CD ready for you to print out from either PDF or EPS files.
Note to female photographers: There are two versions of the Model Release Form. The male pronoun version and the female pronoun version. Meaning you, the female photographer, are never referred to has "he, his, or him" in this legal document. About time.Software On Board: Included on the CD that holds the large eBook chapter files are an array of special software that is customized to the Coolpix 950 / 990 / 995 / 775 / 5000/5700/5400 cameras. Most of it will work for the new CP880 / 885 as well. What's in the software? A whole page outlines that here.
The software included is compatible with both Macintosh and Windows operating systems. Adobe's PDF format reads on all platforms and Adobe Acrobat Readers V. 4, 5 and 6 are included on the CD. (I like the look/feel of 4.0, even though I have all. You might, too, so the choice is yours.)
The CD includes a wealth of demo software (including the official full-size Photoshop 6 tryout), and the full range of the original iNovaFX filters for Photoshop, plus an array of special files for gaining digital camera experience in printing, panoramic image manipulation, and special effects.
At last count, there are 420 (FOUR HUNDRED TWENTY*) Photoshop Action Filters included. Each does something new, useful, artistic, utilitarian, or unexpected. They're even polite. They clean up the Photoshop History files they've create after they're through, making it easy for you to try something new, like a variation, for instance, without clogging your machine with a string of memory-eating steps. Some of them leave an automatic trail of snapshots in the History file so you can jump to an earlier stage and experiment from there.
The eBook is designed to be read on the computer through the CD ROM/DVD drive and interactively permits study, exploration, high-resolution image inspection, and immediate access to other software running on the computerall at the same time.
So you can read the book and have Photoshop running and be experimenting and trying things out as you read. People report that this makes the entire process smoother and more appropriate to their work process.
Pictured: Hand-held panoramic made from four shots. How do you do that?The Appendix contains pages and pages of links to sites on the Internet. And every one is interactive! Simply click on a URL, and your browser will go find it for you. Only links that were verified active as of the publication date are included.
The Index steers you to all sorts of deep levels of research with topics in the eBook. With over 500 pages of stuff to sort through, a good index is worth its weight in Tylenol.
Interactive Bookmarks and Thumbnails. It's an eBook, after all. Detailed images of other pages can be scrolled to the left of the page allowing you to spot the contents of other pages. The unique look and layout of each page can easily be identified and jumped to quicker than flipping through many paper books. The sample page shows you how easy this is to encounter.
Plus a complete Bookmark system lets you jump to any other chapter instantly, seamlessly. Even ones that are not loaded at the moment. Adobe Acrobat lets you navigate similar to a web page system. Arrows guide you to pages you have visited in the past. The question "Now, where was that thing?" is obsolete. Being an electronic text has certain advantages. For instance, you can search through the entire eBook by word or phrase.
Filters On Board: The dust jacket reverses to become two types of tools for your photo sessions. One is a test chart for inclusion in the shot as a reference. It has gray, white, grayscale, and color patches that tell you if the color is off and give you a reference that works with the Photoshop filter software for putting it back together just right. The other side has the amazing glass-free color filter collection that work with any lens in any light. You white balance on these images and instantly turn your camera into its own color filter set. Want a more magenta sunset? Use the last rays of sun as the light source on the right one of these filters and you'll have it. There are 48 of them. 12 different hues and four strengths each.
InfoBites: During the production of the special sections, it became apparent that many of the things I was dealing with were things people were asking over and over in questions on the Internet. Wherever these could be consolidated, I tightened them into a fast-reading InfoBites, ideas to remember because they reveal a technique, a factoid, a cool bit of knowledge, or a secret you should know.
So you will be able to find them in a fast browse, they each are prefaced by the purple InfoBite symbol at the head of each InfoBite paragraph.
Organization: Insead of one single file to load into your computer, the eBook is presented in three versions:
1. The Ultra Resolution version with the maximum image quality heads the list. In this version each chapter loads as an individual file, but simply clicking on the last page of each chapter automatically loads the next with only a moment's --blink-- transition. This keeps the file size down and load times to a minimum. This is the version that allows 300+% blow-ups on screen without seeing pixels.
2. The High Resoloution version, with image quality about four times higher than typical web-distributed PDF files, is also available. It behaves identically to the Ultra Resolution version but the images are held at slightly lower resolution. For systems with lower memory or slower CPUs, this version includes all the Thumbnails and Bookmarks of the Ultra Res version.
3. The High Resolution Single File version has the entire eBook in one large High Resolution file (60+ megabytes) and bypasses the need to jump from individual chapter file to individual chapter file. If you have the memory and speed, you may find this the easiest to work with for re-reading and searching for ideas by word or phrase.
*420 filters. At last count. Not kidding.
Every single one of them is useful and is designed to solve some puzzle. Some of them are downright jaw-dropping. The stamp seen here is an example. Everything needed to create the surrounding border is only one button-press away. (The type was added after.)
About 50 of them are about evenly divided between fixing color white balance shooting errors in the 950/775 and 990/880/995/5000/5700/4500/5400.
96 more guide you through Photoshop's own filter maze with amazing results.
Pictured here are two "filters" that don't alter the image, but they do give you a unique way to contain it.
One makes the image into a stamp and the other causes it to obviously become a frame of 35mm film.
The rest of them are involved with improving something, artistically enhancing something, special effecting something, repairing something, making something impossible happen--that sort of thing.
You had better plan on making a day of it, playing around with these filters. Or maybe take a leisurely week off just to try them on a wide variety of images. They give you a new series of expressive channels to interpret your photographs through. A number of new tools for your digital darkroom.
Files: A number of sample and test images are included to play with. Including printable charts, model releases, and the most valuable thing you could imagine: an Artistic License.
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