Layout

Call for feedback!

Now that my two articles are published on the Adobe.com site (well actually, one article and one tutorial), I am thinking of what kind of tutorial or article I’ll write next. The first and easiest thing I’d like to do is write a second part to my Removing Image Backgrounds With Fireworks 8 tutorial in order to give a few pointers on how to deal with images with more complex backgrounds and how to get a good initial bitmap selection. The comment I got most often following the publication of that tutorial here and on the Macromedia site is that the image I used was too basic and simple. This was a deliberate choice as I wanted to concentrate on the basic masking techniques without getting bogged down in the minutia of selecting a very complex background. But I got several request to share techniques on how to do just that so I decided to write a follow-up.

What I need from you are suggestions on typical images you have to deal with in your own projects for which you would like me to show you how I would remove their backgrounds or "lift" objects from them. Feel free to email me and send me sample images. If I get several I’ll post my favorites here and have an informal poll through a post’s comments to decide on the most popular candidate. Then I’ll write a new tutorial that focused on creating the mask shape itself through a mix of techniques.

There is also a more involved project I’ve been thinking of tackling for some time. As some of you might know, I was one of several co-authors on a Fireworks book that was supposed to be published by Glashaus some time after Fireworks MX 2004’s release. Glasshaus’ parent company Peer Information has gone bankrupt in the middle of the project and, although the rights were sold to APress, the project was never picked back up and died. It would have been a great book that took a Web site project from the initial design and comping stages using Fireworks to exporting prototype code for testing and finishing the project by coding it using standard compliant semantic markup using Dreamweaver. My own two chapters dealt with the slicing and optimization of the layout in one chapter then the exporting of the finished graphics and coding of the site in Dreamweaver.

What I’d like to know following this is if there would be any kind of interest from this site’s readers (and others of course) for an eBook (PDF) version of those chapters (and maybe the design stages as well) and how much you would be willing to pay for such an eBook.

Please post your comments here about the follow-up tutorial or the eBook or email me directly. I’ll be waiting for your feedback!

3 thoughts on “Call for feedback!”

  1. Hello,I just wanted to let you know that I really got a lot out of your article, “Why choose Fireworks”. I have been interested in getting a program similar to Fireworks for a little while since I am a new Dreamweaver user. Your article helped me decide that Fireworks was the program for me. I purchased a license just this morning.

    I’m looking forward to your future articles and any “tips and tricks” you’ll be sharing!

    Sincerely,
    Bob Scott

    Reply
  2. Great article there on why we should chose Fireworks for our web layouts and vectorized graphics. As far as future articles and eBooks are concerned, I would DEFINATELY like to read an article detailing HOW to do a site inside of Fireworks, and then cleaning it up inside of your editor of choice. Many of us grasp that we can do this, but having an article which details exactly what to do, or best practices would be a GREAT help to us all. As far as what I’d be willing to pay, $30 USD for a good book. Anyways, best of luck to ya, and hope to hear from you soon.

    -Ken

    Reply
  3. Yes, please continue with a complex picture. I do appreciate your simple tutorial but now let’s start the real work. I deal with photos shot in huge indoor arenas of show jumping competitions. The dirt is brown, the horse is brown, you get the picture.. When a client wants to use one of these very nice photos I rip my hair out!

    Reply

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