Take Control of Creating Good PDFs (10)

This ebook would reveal what we've learned over several years of producing Take Control ebooks with regard to how to design and produce a PDF that takes advantage of PDF features and is meant to be read on screen, rather than just printed. It would cover linking, tables of contents, and multimedia, plus lessons about what different readers can do.

  Take Control of QuickTime Pro (20)

This ebook would provide an update on creating multimedia videos with QuickTime Pro and would serve as a replacement for QuickTime for the Web: For Windows and Macintosh, last published in 2003. It would include how-tos on editing videos, text, music, and MIDI tracks; masking, color effects and skins; SMIL and QuickTime scripting; working with Flash; as well as options for importing and exporting.

  Take Control of Creating a Mac Home Media Station (89)

Apple's vision of the Mac as your digital media hub hasn't quite been realized yet, although there's still a lot you can do with third-party products. This ebook would look at how you can use a Mac (probably a Mac mini or iMac, though older Macs might work too) to record and watch TV, to play pre-recorded music along with Internet and over-the-air radio, to display digital photos, and more, perhaps all controlled by a PDA or Bluetooth cell phone.

  Take Control of Converting Video to QuickTime (53)

All those home movies, no matter what the tape format, are starting to disintegrate, so this ebook would help you figure out what hardware and software you need to digitize the video and process it in a useful fashion so it can be shared as digital movies or put on video DVDs. (Again, this book would likely be of interest to both Mac and Windows users, but there would be too much different information to bundle it into a single ebook, so we'd probably do a Mac version and then see about doing a Windows version.)

  Take Control of Converting LPs to MP3 (105)

You have a huge collection of music on LP, cassette, and 8-track (well, OK, not 8-track), and you want to listen to it on your computer in MP3 format (or Apple Lossless or FLAC). This ebook would walk you through acquiring the necessary hardware and software, and it would teach you the techniques to digitize your music at a good quality level, and how to best add the metadata so you can work with it properly in iTunes. (This is the sort of book that would be of interest to both Mac and Windows users, but there would be too much different information to bundle it into a single ebook, so we'd probably do a Mac version and then see about doing a Windows version.)

  Take Control of Producing Videos with iMovie (61)

You have a digital camcorder and the latest version of iMovie. How hard can it be to produce a short video for a Web-based commercial or distributing on CD or consumer DVD? As you know if you've tried it, there's a lot to learn, and even if the tools are good, you'll spend a great deal of time getting everything right. This ebook will walk you through the entire process, with steps for making sure you have the right equipment, shooting your video, editing it down, and munging it for different types of distribution. The ebook will also discuss the utility of different file formats, but you'll have to swing the first movie deal on your own.

  Take Control of Getting Started with Adobe CS Studio (36)

This book would give a basic understanding of how each of the applications within Adobe Studio CS work in plain and simple language. Introductions to getting up and running would include simple tasks in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and GoLive. It should be suitable for people who are intimidated by the sheer power of the applications but want to dive in at the shallow end. Needless to say, it would not cover the applications in any great detail, since each of them could easily support multiple short ebooks.

  Take Control of Text in InDesign (39)

Although Adobe InDesign has a huge amount of power, much of it is difficult to find, particularly for those switching from PageMaker or QuarkXPress. This ebook would focus on helping users learn what InDesign can do with text, including working with styles, spell checking, using the Story Editor, importing text, and more. If this book were to do well, we'd also consider other titles about specific tasks in InDesign.

  Take Control of Color Management (108)

This ebook would describe how to set up your Mac for RGB and CMYK printing, how to obtain predictable color results when printing, the best ways of calibrating your printer/scanner with your Mac, and walk you through the steps of preparing your files to send to a commercial printer. An open question with such a book is if it should focus purely on the Mac or also include Windows information since many people who need to do color printing have clients using Windows. This title (or a second title) might also look at onscreen color-matching problems and solutions for Web sites and for understanding Macintosh vs. Windows color display technologies.

Email address: