Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software (O'Reilly Nutshell)

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Summary: Wallace does it again
Review: Mr. Shawn Wallace has once again transformed the graphics programming genre. With this tour-de-force, Wallace sews up perl in a neat little package. His deft use of the English language combined with an a priori understanding of computing graphicae has made this a must-have for all with the need-to-know. By far this is Mr. Wallace's most accessable work to date. Buy this book, if it's the only thing you do for the next ten years

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Summary: A superb 'Mogrify' from documentation to knowledge
Review: Shawn manages to extend the existing documentation for the myriad of graphical programming methods into real solutions for real situations, transforming these tools that can do stuff into tools that can do stuff _for_you_. From the depths of graphics file formats to the heights of Perl modules for GIMP, "Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software" runs the gambit, and wins the gold while doing so.

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Summary: Exactly what I was looking for
Review: This book is exacly what you need for creating dynamic webpages. It covers everything from file types to advanced image manuipulation functions. This book is well written so it is easy to understand even if you aren't familiar with PERL yet. I sincerely recommend it if you are going to create graphics on the web.

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Summary: Exactly what I was looking for
Review: This book is exacly what you need for creating dynamic webpages. It covers everything from file types to advanced image manuipulation functions. This book is well written so it is easy to understand even if you aren't familiar with PERL yet. I sincerely recommend it if you are going to create graphics on the web.

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Summary: Save your money
Review: This book offers nothing but the documentation found at the CPAN website. They dont even go as far as to suggest any use (other than the obvious) for any function. So, I will give you one: When printing a string in an image, do @bounds=GD::Image->stringTTF(...) first. It will give you the string dimensions without actually graphing the string. You can then use the bounds array to see what the width and size of the string is so that you can center it. Want to know what the bounds array holds? Spend the money for the book, or go look it up at CPAN.org for free. Oh, by the way, this book does not even tell you that you can call stringTTF as a package subroutine, let alone the numerous reasons why you would want to use it as such.... Like I said - save your money.

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Summary: Definitive coverage of freeware programmable graphics tools
Review: This is not an art book. There are not even any color illustrations. Rather, there is uniquely definitive and comprehensive coverage of the most important freeware graphics tools useful for web development. There is a strong bias toward programmatic tools, those which can be controlled from server-parsed HTML or CGI using Perl, which allow drawing graphics interactively with the user on the fly. One example with source code is a Perl "biorhythm" calculator, where the user enters a birthdate and the web page draws a customized GIF bar chart with a sinusoidal envelope, emulating the coin-operated "biorhythm" machine at the Vince Lombardi Rest Area on I-95 in New Jersey. This basic technique can be used for charts of stock performance, server activity, and any other on-demand drawing. The ImageMagick tool, which can be run from a command line to do batch processing (such as thumbnailing) or through a Perl API, is also well covered, showing how to draw text labels onto images and do other tasks essential to good web practice. The GIMP, a web-friendly freeware clone of Adobe Photoshop, is covered primarily from the point of view of its relatively unknown Perl API, but this is not a book about the GIMP and there are better choices of books (especially those with color) if interactive use of the GIMP is your main concern. However, use of the GIMP to create basic web elements such as flaming marbles or imploding cats is covered. This book stands in a class by itself on its subject matter, and is destined to become one of the classic O'Reilly references. While it does have copious pointers to web information via URLs, the book's most serious deficiency is certainly that it is heavily tied to the current snapshot of available tools, and the freeware tool development pace will doubtlessly necessitate frequent revisions of this book, possibly as often as annually. The author is also to be commended for not flinching from discussions of technical issues where appropriate, such as image compression, interlacing, and the internals of GIF, JPEG, and PNG file formats, but these discussions are not essential to the book if the reader has little interest in technical issues and wants to get right to the cookbook graphics recipes.

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Summary: Not bad but somewhat selective
Review: Yup it's not a bad book but comes at things from rather an unrelenting Unix and Open Source background. While apps like Gimp (for design) and ImageMagick (for on the fly generation) are fine they don't really compete with commercial software like Photoshop or ImageGoo. So to exclude them is unrealistic - after all how much is your time worth?