This book describes my familys life, which is full of historical experiences going through the Hitler era, the Stalin regime, and communism, to the current decade in the United States. The accounts of our experiences reflect the time from the 1940s, when my mothers family had no electricity or water in their home in a village in Poland, to my successful career as an award winning chef and comfortable married life in the United States. Brush with the Edge of Time and Profession is a deeply personal book that details the joys and sorrows of a mother and son. Their stories are equally inspiring and celebrate the human heart and demonstrates how one can survive even in the most difficult of circumstances. These lifelong memories are about wonder and about kindness, they are about being open to the gifts of both the light and the shadows of our experience." - The US Review of Books

Each year, Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User magazine and the #1 best-selling Photoshop author, trains literally thousands of photographers on how to retouch portraits using Photoshop through his live seminars, online classes, DVDs, and standing-room only workshops at the Photoshop World Conference & Expo. Now you can learn the same techniques he uses in his own retouching workflow, in the only book of its kind–one written expressly for photographers who do their own retouching. As a pro photographer himself, Scott understands that photographers make their living shooting, not retouching. But, delivering fully retouched images is now expected by clients. That’s why Scott put together this amazing resource for teaching photographers the quickest, easiest, and most effective ways to create professional-looking, retouched final images without spending hours grinding away at painstaking, detailed techniques. LEARN HOW THE PROS DO IT It’s all here–the step-by-step methods for fixing, enhancing, and finishing your portraits in Photoshop. Using the techniques in this book, you’ll create images that will absolutely wow your clients. You’ll learn: • How to soften skin and still retain detail and texture • The best tricks for beautifully enhancing eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes • How to selectively sharpen portraits without complicated masking • How to create gorgeous-looking lips • How to remove blemishes fast and keep the most detail • The pros’ tricks for body sculpting • How to make your subject’s hair look fabulous • How to give your retouches that natural look that sets them apart • Plus, you get Scott’s complete 5-minute, 15-minute, and 30-minute start-to-finish workflows If you’re ready to learn the “tricks of the trade”–the same ones that today’s leading pro photographers use to retouch, tuck, tighten, and tone their images for that pro-retouched look–you’re holding the book that will do exactly that. It will radically change the way you retouch your portraits from here on out, and give you the best-looking, most natural retouches you’ve ever done.

Every individual has a passion for a particular profession/work which, in many cases, is unexplored. Through this book, The Professional Edge "For a Fantastic Career & Life, I am facilitating the process of realizing one's true passion and also, sharing a mechanism to engineer/re-engineer one's life in sync with his/her passion. It is an Excellent Workbook for one and all seeking a "Fantastic" Career & Life. It has been written purely out of my personal experience. The exercises mentioned in the book are thought provoking and motivates one to Introspect as to where one stands presently and where one aspires to ascent in his/her Career & Life. This book is especially very useful for Students & Budding Professionals. It will help them to know & explore them "self", understand their skill gaps, work to bridge the skill gaps, build supreme confidence & competency and there by, be a professional par excellence.

Studies have shown that 93 percent of what is believed about people in business is based upon visual messages, not on credentials or on the content of conversation. An invaluable resource for today's job market, How to Gain the Professional Edge, Third Edition helps readers answer a multitude of questions about behavior, attitude, and image to improve professionalism and open doors to advancement and career success. This new edition has been updated to discuss evolving social media and technology, greater awareness of interpersonal issues in the workplace, and changing fashions. Chapters include: Critical First Impressions Do You Hear What You Are Not Saying? The Attitude Advantage Social Graces in Business Places Maximize Your Relationships Details Make a Difference You Are What You Wear Tune into Technology. Perfect for young readers preparing to enter the job market or workers who want to hone their professionalism and advance their careers, this informative eBook provides the tools, skills, and techniques to help people achieve their professional goals.

Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.

A Year in the Woods Brush Cat recounts a year in the life of men who perform one of the most dangerous jobs in America—logging New England’s vast forests for timber used in hundreds more ways than most of us realize, from houses to furniture to paper to electricity. In the spirit of John McPhee and Tracy Kidder, we meet an unforgettable cast of characters; feel their pain and exultation, and come to realize the centrality of wood in all of our lives. While they are first and foremost loggers cutting down trees, they are also ardent and effective conservationists who depend on healthy, intact forests for their long-term survival. True, some loggers are wood pirates, but most are pragmatic environmentalists, always asking the question: How do we keep this crop alive and thriving forever? The narrative moves deftly from useful tips on how not to lose body parts to a chain saw, through the terror of huge trees that fall the wrong way, to inconsistent and wrong-headed government forest management. It explores the worldwide demand for wood and wood chips, as well as the effect of climate change on the forest, and traces the money that keeps it all moving. Brush Cat clears the branches to reveal a hidden and fascinating world.

Provides step-by-step instructions for professional baking techniques; covers baking principles, equipment, and ingredients; and includes more than nine hundred recipes as well as tips on baking for special diets.

The comprehensive guide to amazing cake decoration—now fully updated Professional Cake Decorating is a must-have resource for professional and aspiring cake artists, baking and pastry students, and cake decorating hobbyists, drawing on years of experience from master cake designer and IACP Award nominee Toba Garrett. This Second Edition has been completely revamped with gorgeous new photography and a fresh new design. The New Skills have been re-organized into a user-friendly, step-by-step format, and line art and photos throughout the book provide a visual reference for each new technique. The book begins with an introductory chapter on all the fundamentals of the cake designer's art, from covering a cake board to assembling and icing a layered cake to stacking cake tiers with pillars or columns. Subsequent chapters cover decorating techniques including Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Piping Skills, The Art of Writing and Painting, Royal Icing Design Skills, Hand Modeling Skills, Pastillage Construction, Gumpaste Flowers, and much more. A chapter on Miniature Cakes and Decorated Cookies includes techniques for making petit fours and other small treats, while the Cake and Confectionery Gallery provides inspiration for decorators with nearly 20 full-page photos of breathtaking cakes and information on the techniques needed to complete each one. Garrett also includes recipes for cakes, fillings, icings, cookies, and more, as well as an appendix of templates to help decorators replicate the designs shown in the book.

Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.