Adobe Books

If you just want enough information to cover the basics, this is not a book you will want to have. But if you want to get an in-depth knowledge of Fonts,Forms, Formatting, Graphics, Objects, and Output - - this is one of the most detailed references you will find about the Portable Document Format (PDF). Clear, Concise, and Encyclopedic in Scope. As with all published works there are some errata, and Adobe wisely allows you to download the corrections or a complete edition from their web site. If you regularly work with PDF files, this book will prove most useful to have on your shelf.

Go to Adobe site to download the errata. You can also download the book if want.

It has been reorganized to make it self-contained and more readable. However, lots of bugs (some are documented in the errata) occurred durring the transition. I tend to believe that the PDF 1.3 spec of March 11 1999 has less bug, albeit preserving the old chapter layout.

Also note that since Acrobat 5.0 is out, there would be a PDF 1.4 spec with JBIG2 support. Maybe the Acrobat 5.0/PDF 1.4 would mature after a while.

Overall, it's a better book after the restructuring.

This is definitely a reference that you will want to keep on hand when you are delivering work for a client. Very in depth technical information about formatting, output options. Forms are included along with in depth use of graphics, fonts, objects. There may be too much information for someone who is just trying to get the basics done. For those of us who like to know the ins and outs of a program without actually coding it, it is a good resource.

For novices, learning their way around Photoshop can be daunting to say the least. No technophobe, me, with limited patience for technobabble, I was able to dive right on in with Tally's hands on tutorials.

Too often, in my opinion, some of the reviews of books on software applications are written by people needing to tell/impress the world with how smart they are. The attitude is: "I can understand all this arcane junk, and you can't." As a professional newspaper photographer for many years, knowing your f-stops and your film are far more apt to lead to your photo ending up on page one than is knowing that a Nikon camera has 1,000 plus parts.

Yes, it's a beginner's book, but one I find myself going back to for reference time and again. A reader friendly introduction to Adobe's Photoshop. Highly recommended.

A disappointment, I expected more. Details a little muddy, hard to follow in area's, I wasted time trying to figure out steps that had been missed. This is not a book I would purchase again; there are better more detailed books out there.

Hello, Taz Tally here, the author of Photoshop CS2 Before and After Makeovers.
Greetings from glorious Alaska!

I thought you might like to know a bit more about what is in my book and why I wrote it.
For years, I have been teaching my Photoshop production techniques in my seminars. I have received numerous requests to gather many of my production techniques and tips in one volume ... well, this is it. I like to work quickly (to provide plenty of time for kayaking) as well as to produce good results, so I use lot's of shortcuts, many of which I include in this book.

Some jobs and images require careful detailed work, and some do not ... often a quick and dirty technique is just as effective as a longer more time consuming one. I share with you how to recognize those images and challenges that require only Q&D attention, and those that require more. And you will learn a whole slew of the time tested approaches and Photoshop techniques that I use.
I hope you enjoy this book ... please let me know what you think.
Also, if you have your own Before and After projects and techniques you would like to share, please send them to me ... I am collecting projects and techniques for the second volume of Photoshop Before and After and am eager to include other peoples work and wisdom along with my own ... so feel free to send me your project ideas, and you might just get published! You can contact me via email at <>

This book teaches you a lot, and although the explanations are made to make you think hard you wont regret it. Exelent!

If you ever wanted to know how to achieve an effect and saving a lot of time, this a great book to start with. I would highly recommend it. Photoshop Textures is interesting too, but this one before that.

What I learn from this book is very little. You can only learn 2 to 3 methods to make your web photos more beautiful. This book is not suitable for expert user.

This book covers information you can find yourself through a good research on the Net, but for what it cost I would get the book and save myself hours of research.
For the lazy type of person this book is a must ;-)

This is a very good book covering the subject of Adobe Photoshop plug-ins. There were numerous plug-ins that I was not familiar with that I have since acquired because of this book. The authors explain the good and bad aspects of each of the plug-ins included throughout. I couldn't expect anything more from a book on this topic.

This is a very light and readable book on Photoshop plug-ins. The authors investigated over 5000 plug-ins to Adobe Photoshop using several different computers since apparently Photoshop crashes if you install more than 1000 plug-ins into it on a single computer. This is a limit I guess few of us will ever be able to verify.
The authors will show you how to find the right plug-ins for your system and install them as well as explain what they are and how they work. They will also show you how to manage your plug-ins or even make some of your own. This book is a good resource written especially for the digital photographer, and has plenty of color images demonstrating what various plug-ins can do to a photograph. In the back of the book there are listings of web resources for finding the various plugins. Several of the links are now broken, but there is still a lot of good information there.
Besides going over the set of plug-ins that deal with image correction such as lens distortion and correcting for JPEG compression effects, there are sections on adding "the elements" to your images and also for surface effects. The element plug-ins include lightening, trees, fog, smoke, and fire. The surface effect plug-ins include fur, jigsaw puzzle, tape, and wood. The section on creating your own plug-ins mainly refers you to on-line resources, which is good since there are many good tutorials already out there on making your own Photoshop plug-in. There is even a chapter on plug-ins for hardware devices such as digital cameras, graphics tablets, and scanners.
The release of Photoshop CS2 has made some of this book obsolete, but it is still a good resource of creative ways to use Photoshop in digital photography that is a cut above most books on the subject out there since it deals with more than mere image correction. Also, the web resources and listing of plug-ins are still useful. For under $20 it is still a good value, especially since it is hard to find books on the subject of Photoshop plug-ins.

I bought this book as I was new to this software. It does explain in detail the various points. I feel their should have bee a chapter for using Illustrator for web and a bit more on using Illustrator ad Photoshop together

This book provides a wealth of knowledge. The author tries to be as concise as possible, but with all the info given it proves to be difficult at times. It is a good building block for the beginner, as well as a good reference guide for the intermediate and advanced graphic artist. He seems to cover all bases on most subjects. I give it thumbs up Roger!

Being new to Illustrator 7 I needed something to get mt feet wet. After reading Mr Staten Island's review I figured why not. The Author knows what he is talking about, but my biggest problem is the fact that there are no color pics at all to show you what a finished product looks like. They look like cartoons. Where are the "real world" examples? The chapter on wacky text effects is a joke, it gives you some insight but once again where are the real exapmles. Some of the examples don't come out like his do in the book. This book is for someone who has a graphics background. I got a bad feeling about this book when I first opened it. This book may help you, but it sure didn't help me. I feel like I wasted some money on this.

I guess i'm one of the only people who did NOT like this book. I got about 30 pages into it before I decided to take it back. It's neither clear nor concise and some of the "recipes" that were provided didn't even work. (And yes, I followed them step by step to the letter.)

This books achieves in a few pages what other huge books try to achieve in a volume: to teach advanced techniques in a straightforward way. You may be missing some of the best techniques if you don't have this book.

I found this book to be an excellent resource. The content is very well organized and is very thorough. The book was very effective in introducing me to new application options and techniques of photoshop. The writer is clearly very knowledgeable and has an easy to follow writing style with excellent examples and illustrations. I highly recommend this book.

this book is very light on technique you can find the exact same thing on the net I wouldnt bother unless you no nothing about photo shop

This book pulls out all the stops, presenting helpful, practical information vital to creating perfect prints. It is well illustrated with color images and screenshots, making any digital-photographic endeavor--from sandwiching to vignetting to creating "infrared" images--a quick and painless process. I especially appreciated the reader-friendly organization of the book. I could flip to any page to find a great technique, mastering the steps at my own pace without wading through a maze of unimportant, high-brow digital jargon. This book is inspiring!

I like this book very much because it starts with the basics of Adobe Photoshop, and it also starts with learning different effects and techniques you can start to use right away. This is a fun way to learn - you really feel like you are accomplishing something. Perkins and Grant use layman language without making the reader feel like a dummy; illustrations and examples of what is being talked about are plentiful.

I turned to this book many times when I needed to learn a Photoshop technique in a hurry, although I have several Adobe Photoshop books on hand. I knew with Tradional Photographic Effects With Adobe Photoshop I could do what I needed to with little confusion and searching.

Along with clear and concise instructions for working on your photographs, a section covers input and output techniques.

This is a great book for Photoshop beginners and a nice book for Photoshop pros to have on hand to a technique up in a hurry.

The book is great if you simply want an introduction to Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks or (Photoshop in the premium edition). The Dreamweaver section is not very thorough and the Flash section is somewhat difficult to follow. Overall I was able to master Dreamweaver and Fireworks so two out of three aint bad. The book is definately worth it.

I purchased this book primarily for information on Flash CS3 and Photoshop CS3. I don't have anything to compare it to in regard to these two features, but it is clear to me that the section on Dreamweaver CS3 is not nearly as thorough as the book "Dreamweaver MX 2004" which I purchased several years ago.

I just tried to read up on a couple of Dreamweaver topics in "The Web Collection Revealed" but couldn't find them mentioned. I didn't have any trouble finding the topics covered in my "DREAMWEAVER MX 2004" and the instruction from MX 2004 still worked in the CS3 version of Dreamweaver.

This is one of several tutorial packages I bought at the same time to help me learn the Adobe CS3 suite of web-related programs. I wanted to determine which was the best to start with, so I sampled a couple of chapters from each of about six titles before deciding this was the clearly best of the group to get me started. My main interest is in learning Flash, but I've got a use for almost everything in the CS3 suite. This book provided an unanticipated motivation to stop avoiding Dreamweaver and take a fresh look at Fireworks as well. (I no longer find FW redundant in a world dominated by PS and IL.) I can't say enough about how exquisite this book is, and the inclusion of camouflage nature scenes was a smart move. It is well organized, nicely paced and I haven't found any glitches yet, which is seldom the case with tutorial books. If you are just starting out with CS3, my advice, and I write educational books for a living, is to start with WC Revealed and then you'll have better info on how to decide what will be your next move. Everyone associated with this book can be proud of the results. Kudos, and thanks. I'd give it more stars if I could.

A very nice card.. informative.. I received the card before I received the software so I can't comment to it's content yet. It appears to be a handy tool to avoid searching through menus to find a function.

I use many of the features only occasionally, it is very handy to have along on my travels.

Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional Quick Reference Card - Handy Heavy Laminated, Tri-Fold Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Tip & Tricks Guide. 6 Total Pages. Stores Easily. Ultimate Reference for Shortcuts, Tips & Cheats for Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro (Software Quick Reference...

Any collection strong in Adobe CS3 needs Adobe Creative Suite 3 Bible: at over 1,200 pages of information it literally is a 'bible' of information, packing in details on all the toolbox offerings from the latest Adobe creation. From setting up workflows for teams or studios to exporting Web designs, working with older versions of files, adding animation and sound slips, and more, this offers up black and white screen shots paired with important information essential to Adobe users, making it a top pick not just for computer libraries, but for general-interest holdings.

I will take half the blame for buying this as an indie film guy. I specifically searched for "Soundbooth CS3" and this is the guide that was the top pick. I saw the 5 star and ordered, not realizing that any book that would call itself the "CS3 Bible" would not cover at least on some level all programs in CS3. What is there is fine, but those interested in workflow across the entire CS3 spectrum STAY AWAY. This book covers ONLY DESIGN PREMIUM, and DOES NOT HAVE ANY COVERAGE OF Soundbooth, Premiere Pro, Encore, or After Effects. If you are a web designer that's fine (unless you want to use Soundbooth to work with sound, premier to edit, or after effects to produce, or encore to create pro dvd,) but as a book calling itself "The _____ Bible", I was extremely disappointed to find no mention of the rest (and arguably most important) parts of CS3, and therefore a complete waste of money... should have called itself "The CS3 Print/Web Bible", but without Premiere and After Effects, that's even a tough sell in the age of youtube. Maybe the "CS3 Document Creation Bible" would be about right... but I guess it wouldn't sell as many copies.
There is a lot of discussion about Bridge, which really is a useful program for any CS3 app, but you can find out the same info in singular CS3 program guide. (A Good Photoshop, After Effects or Premiere Pro CS3 will have a good Bridge tutorial anyway).
If you are trying to do a 'zine or something, I'm sure this is more than adequate, but be aware that there are hundreds and hundreds of pages on things like "creating a text path" etc etc, that other guides will explain step by step in 2 pages.
This book is much more about Illustrator than anything else, which to me, is about the most useless program in the CS3 canon. I have leafed through the book twice now looking for some photoshop things I could learn. I only have a year of experience with Photoshop, though I have read and used a few photoshop books, I consider myself a "practicing novice", and this had nothing that any of my other photoshop books already had, and frankly some of the things being taught in here in Illustrator can be done just as easily in Photoshop.
If the book had called itself "The CS3 document Bible" I would have never bought it or commented, and if it were titled as such, I'm sure it would deserve 5 stars, but as currently titled, it deserves a 2. I'm giving it a three because I did order it without vetting it as much as I should have. I wasted my money, don't waste yours.