Re: Aquatint Screens.

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:
> .... I'm trying to convince him (Mark Nelson) to write a Diginegs for
> Dummies...

Chris, I think maybe he can't... At least, my experience in both editing
the experts and reading (or trying to read) their books (as in the present
Photoshop Miasma) is that unless they are edited CAREFULLY by a neutral
party they do NOT NOT NOT realize that they haven't explained -- THEY know
the material and the terms are second nature to them, so they are sweetly
unaware that the reader (possibly even a smart and relatively savvy reader
-- ie, NOT a "dummy") doesn't know what they mean, or have a clue how to
do the thing they were just told in passing to do.

I have long surmised that the editors, if you could call them that, see it
as gibberish but suppose that's because they don't understand
photography, figuring that photographers would understand it...

Meanwhile, in the Photoshop books, 99 times out of 100 the terms you need
help with are NOT NOT NOT in the index, rarely in the menu. For instance,
Blatner/Fraser said such & such a trick can be done in "high pass"... What
is high pass? Not even an index entry in my 3 Photoshop manuals... Online
help reveals that it's a filter, plus about one other sentence. A search
in the filters menu finds it finally under -- "other" ! And it is indeed
interesting. Some day when the brain reconstitutes I think it could give
some useful effects...

I would assume of course that Mark is better than this crew (he couldn't
be worse -- and by "this crew" I mean Blatner, Fraser and Katrin -- If
they worked for me I'd fire them, or at the very least need 32 e-mails to
get the story into coherence).

I could rant on this topic for hours and just scratch the surface,
but...for the moment suffice to suggest that you and Mark collaborate:
You ask the questions, get it so YOU understand it, and publish under
joint byline. You might even get credit for it !

Judy
Received on Fri Feb 25 16:50:27 2005