Desktop Books

Vicki and Barry certainly know what they're talking about. Clear coverage of the new painting engine allowed me to get stuck straight in.

Great price, too!

Photoshop is often thought of as a tool for editing color images. Black and white gets overlooked. This excellent step-by-step, show-and-tell text is brief, concise, and to the point about what it takes to produce excellent B&W images.

It is regrettable that the authors have not updated the book ... . The book was published in 1995 and covers Photoshop versions 2.5 and 3. While the fundamentals remain correct, Photoshop has evolved into 5.5 and a lot has changed in terms of the tools. An update is way overdue. That having been said, this is still the definitive short course on coping in B&W.

The thing that sets this book apart from most, and make it most effective, is that there are more photos and graphics than words. Most of us are visual learners and my knowledge of using Photoshop has dramatically improved in just a matter of an hour or so. I'm only to chapter 2. I recommend highly to anyone that wants to know how to use Adobe Photoshop CS 2 or CS 3 more effectively.

The Photoshop Down and Dirty Tricks books are my absolute favorites of all PS books and I own them all. Unfortunately Mr. Kelby has gotten so busy that he is no longer doing them, having watched both CS2 and CS3 announce dates expire. Bummer. The NAPP folks would prefer you learn on their website, which is fine and good, but some people prefer books! If you can get your hands on any one of these, do. Photoshop basics never change. These books are fun and informative!

There are a number of books that discuss taking a digital photographis image and using Photoshop to create wild abstract photographuic art. This book is different. It discusses using computer-based image processing in order to improve a hpotograph without substantially altering its content.

The book uses Photoshop version 8, also called Photoshop CS as the processing package. It also presents techniques that can be used with other software packages.

The book is splendidly illustrated with hundreds of four color photographs showing exactly what is being done to modify the images. It shows the commands and procedures that are used to create just what effects. All in all, it probably uses only some 20% of the commands available in Photoshop. It is not a general introduction to Photoshop, but is concentrated in the area of pixel processing. In that area it completely covers the subject in great detail.

I've had Photoshop CS software on my wish-list for a long time, so when I picked up the book Photoshop CS Savvy for review, I had a great reason to finally purchase the software.

With over 700 pages and a CD-ROM, this book can seem daunting, yet it can easily be used by Photoshop beginners like me. In the "Introduction," the author says it like this, "It's for those of us who take photographs, draw, paint, and cut and paste pictures. It's for computer artists, graphic designers, Web designers, and printers. It is intended to help master the software, at whatever level you might be in the learning curve."

One of the first things I noticed was the books' layout. The book is divided into four parts, twenty-seven chapters, two appendices, a glossary, and an index. When dividing 700 pages by twenty-seven chapters, there tends to be a lot of stuff that's not mentioned in a common table of contents. This book goes the extra mile by including a "Contents At A Glance" in addition to the "Contents." The "Contents At A Glance" consists of only two pages, while the "Contents" is eleven pages long and is very detailed. This allowed me to scan through the "Contents" to find something specific to read about. In my case, one of the first things I wanted to read about was "Photo Retouching." I quickly found it in Part III, Chapter 19, page 449.

Before I started using the book as a tutorial, I wanted to give it the review it deserves, so I began at the beginning. Chapter 1, The Foundations of Photoshop, was very interesting. It's interesting to me because it started with a very nice history of imaging. I read about mosaics, painting, Impressionism, printing, photography, collage, photomontage, the Web, and finally a history of Photoshop. This was a very nice bit of information before getting into the meat and potatoes of Photoshop.

Chapter 2, What's New in Photoshop CS, was really good for me because I haven't upgraded my Photoshop since 5.5. So, I had a lot of catching up to do.

Chapter 5, Setting Up Photoshop, provided an in-depth guide to setting preferences and allocating memory. I didn't even realize there was an Efficiency setting in the status bar at the bottom of the window. If the status bar ever drops below 100%, I can increase the percentage of memory (author recommends by 10% increments) until the efficiency remains at the maximum 100%.

Chapter 8, Working with Type, has lots of great information on how to use Photoshop to create type. I know type is normally created in Illustrator, but Photoshop really shines in its capability to produce cool text effects. The really cool thing about this chapter is the Hands On section. Immediately following nine of the twenty-seven chapters, you'll find nine Hands On sections. After you read a chapter or a few chapters, you come across a Hands On section. These sections are tutorials. The book tells you to access the Photoshop CS Savvy CD to select and save a file onto your disk. Now you can perform some cool Hands On stuff with Photoshop.

Although I've had Photoshop for several years, I've remained at the beginner level. After using Photoshop CS Savvy for a few weeks now, I have to say my Photoshop skills have increased tremendously. Am I a Photoshop expert? Not even close, but I am doing a whole lot more with Photoshop than I ever have before. This book will remain on a shelf close to my iMac for quick reference.

All in all, this is a great book. It has tons of great information and the CD has tutorials, software, demo software, and even a cool 45-page pdf Bonus Chapters quick reference guide. If you're using Photoshop CS, I highly recommend purchasing this book.

I'm a strong intermediate user of Photoshop and have a number of different PS books. This one has a great visual layout, very interesting lessons which are well thoughtout and instructive and packs a lot of information into a very useful format. Highly recommended.

You might consider Photoshop Elements to be Photoshop CA Lite. The price for Elements is very light when compared with Photoshop. Checking Amazon's price for Photoshop CS - $575.99, and Photoshop Elements is $84.99. In my view, probably wrong, I consider that Elements is what Photoshop was a couple of revisions ago. It is probably not really the several year old code, but Photoshop CS code that has had a few features removed. If you're a full fledged professional whose livelyhood depends on software, buy the high priced version. If you're really only an advanced (even very advanced) amateur, save the money. Elements has grown so that it is really quire powerful.

This book is written with the assumption that you know very little about digital photograph editing. It starts with the very simple, i.e. installing and making Elements work on your PC. From there is progresses to every more sophisticated, ever more complex techniques.

It's an interesting cross between a tutorial, step-by-step book and a reference book. If you're starting out on Elements, this would be an excellent place to begin your journey.

Plug-in filters are the hottest thing in digital imaging today. Photoshop Filter Finesse shows you how to use them to their full advantage. In this comprehensive work, Bill Niffenegger explain what all major third party filters do and shows their effects in full color. He then goes on to show, step-by-step, how to create dozens of special effects. Covered effects include: 3D, type, paper, patterns, textures, lighting, halos, smoke, natural media, picture frames, and animation. The included CD-ROM includes filters, images, textures, and product demos. Essential reading for anyone interested in computer graphics

This collection lets you buy all 5 books from the series with a low price. The books are in full color and is comprehensive. You will learn how to make dazzling text and web effects together with other practical techniques that will sizzle up your web page. Best practical books I seen