Born near Verona in 1511, Deke McClelland was once the most popular portrait painter in all of Florence. His career came to a grinding halt a few centuries later with the advent of photography. Broken, penniless, and deeply resentful, Deke dedicated his energies to the development of a pathogen so insidious that it would one day contaminate each and every photograph on the planet. Code named the Pernicious Instrument of eXtreme EviL (or pixel for short), Deke smuggled his terrible creation into The New World and set it free. When his invention turned out to help rather than hurt photography, he went quite mad. He now inflicts his revenge by writing educational books and hosting training videos. His most sinister books are the award-winning Photoshop CS Bible and Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition (www.amazon.com/deke), now in their eleventh year with more copies in print than any other guides on computer graphics. Other subversive titles include Photoshop CS For Dummies, Photoshop Elements For Dummies (both Wil ey Publishing, Inc.), and Real World Illustrator (Peachpit Press). Deke further shocks and appalls as host of the interactive Video Workshop that ships with Photoshop as well as the fiendishly exhaustive Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS (www.totaltraining.com), the predecessor of which was named Training Product of the Year by MacNet 2.0. His other DVD- and CD-based video series include Digital Photography with Photoshop Elements and Total Training for Adobe Illustrator CS (both Total Training). In 1989, Deke won the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Computer Book. Since then, he has received similarly diabolical honors from the Society for Technical Communication (once in 1994 and twice in 1999),Photo>Electronic Imaging (1999), the American Society of Business Press Editors (1995 and 2000), the Western Publications Association (1999), and the Computer Press Association (1990, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997, and twice in 2000). In 1999, Book Bytes named Deke its Author of the Year. In 2002, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals voted Deke into the Photoshop Hall of Fame. During his fall from grace, Deke has also managed to become an Adobe Certified Expert, a member of the PhotoshopWorld Instructor Dream Team, a featured speaker on the 2003 Photoshop Fling cruise of the Eastern Caribbean, and a contributing editor for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines. Few now believe there is any hope for him.
