Test Equipment Books

I wish it was possible to give this book 10 stars! After reading and being mainly confused by books written mainly for professional photographers - even the "Dummies" digital books go into too much technical stuff - this book is a breath of fresh air. It is so helpful and written in such understandable terms that it should be packaged with every digital camera.

The authors really know how to instruct a person in taking great pictures even if they have never picked up a digital camera before.

When explaining how to take a picture in each situation, the icons you need to use are clearly illustrated in the margins.
The photos show examples of a picture taken poorly and then with the correct settings - this is extremely helpful.

The section on how to use a flash is worth the price of the book alone.

Next to my cameras themselves, this book is the most important part of my digital equipment.

In the never-ending quest to learn to take semi-decent pictures, I read through the Digital Photography Field Guide by Cynthia L. Baron and Daniel Peck (Peachpit Press). This is a small, easy to read and understand book on getting the most out of your digital camera.

The chapters: Before You Shoot: Buying Guide; Digital Camera Basics; Photographing People; Capturing Motion; Indoor Places; Outdoor Places; After You Shoot; Digital Camera Troubleshooting; Index

For what this book is and for the intended audience, it's pretty good. The book starts out by explaining how a digital camera works and what the basic features are that you'll want to have. From there, it covers a number of shooting situations you'll experience in the real world, and what camera features you can use to best handle the scene. For instance, trying to shoot good sporting pictures is difficult. The latency between when you click the shutter and when the picture records means that you'll most likely end up getting the split second AFTER the perfect shot. Not good. But the authors show you how to anticipate the action to compensate for latency. The other option is to set for continuous shooting so that a single click will produce a series of shots that will bracket the moment and increase your chances of the perfect picture.

The serious photographer will already know most of this information, so they probably won't get much value out of the book. But if you're a novice and aspire to understand your camera and the art of photography better, this is a good starting point.

In its 120 some pages, the DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY FIELD GUIDE proves itself to be equal parts guide to navigating the controls of a digital camera and a basic course in general photography.

Cynthia L. Baron and Daniel Peck start where the camera pamphlet leaves off in explaining the functions a digital camera is capable of utilizing to capture a well produced photograph under just about any conditions. And they do this using examples of basic photographic composition that can never go out of style.

This book contains all the information that is needed to take great photographs while using your digital camera to its full potential. And offers all this in a format that can easily be used as a field reference.

If I had room for one book only in my camera bag, the DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY FIELD GUIDE would be my choice.

This is an okay book of basic ECG rhthyms. Pocket or compact in size. It gives the basic lead II and 12-lead strips in black & white. Just gives ECG strips, but nothing more such as anatomy/fuction, meds, etc...

This is the best guide to ECGs I've seen. Very practical and contains clinical tips which are great. I found them easy to remember and clinically relevant. Designed for medical students, nurses, doctors, it doesn't waffle on with esoterica, instead, the reader is guided through the basics of ECGs, interpretation and clinical implications. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting a guide to keep handy and refer to it whenever necessary. The quiz is great to test your knowledge, too.

I found this book brilliant. I've always had trouble interpreting ECGs but after reading this book, they make a lot more sense. I've read other books but have never fully understood electrocardiography. The author breaks the topics down into simple concepts, and the clinical hints in each section are very practical, as are the many examples shown. I am now more confident about interpreting ECGs and wish I'd had this book as a medical student and junior doctor. I can see it helping nurses, students, cardiac technicians and doctors wanting to improve their knowledge in the area. I thoroughly recommend it.

Detailed and technically accurate discussions from the quintessential gun writer, Peter Kokalis, on modern weapons. Too bad he is no longer with with SOF.

A series of articles reprinted from 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine from the 80's and 90's. In today's time the articles are a mixed bag. For instance, there is no coverage of the large number of guns that have come out in the last half dozen years.

For instance there is a lengthy article on the M60 machine gun and its faults. And another on the M60E3 version that is highly praised. In reality, subsequent use of the E3 has shown it to have almost as many new problems as it fixed on the original guns. Most front line units have replace their M60's with M240's.

One nice thing, the author does not hesitate to state his opinions, and his opinions seem to be based on actual testing. As a result this gives a refreshing tone to the articles. You might agree with him or not, but at least he seems to have some basis for his views. So many magazines seem to simply report from the press releases sent out by the manufacturers.

Conclusion. Great reading for us arm chair types. But please put out a second edition to cover the newer stuff.

Kokalis's Weapons Tests and Evaluations is an interesting read for armchair tactical operators. The book is a collection of various stories and weapons reviews that Kokalis wrote during his tenure at Soldier of Fortune magazine. As a collection, the articles date from 1982 to 2000, with many of the articles coming from before 1990. Because of the dates of when the articles were originally written, Kokalis skips many newer designs. At the time, Kokalis professes to be the first or one of the first to review some of the systems (AGS-17, etc).

It is somewhat difficult to review the book without commenting on Kokalis's blatent disregard for journalistic or scientific integrity. As a 'journalist', he tought courses in small arms handling and secured ammuntion and parts. Kokalis makes much ado about following military specifications for the M16A2 evaluation, but admits to changing the specification to evaluate other critera.

The book is a good read, but should be taken with a grain of salt or two. Kokalis isn't shy about his opinions; by the end, it's obvious that he has an axe or two to grind.

For most of us, the closest we will ever get to many of the weapons reviewed is in the pages of Jane's Infantry Weapons. If we're lucky, we will see it in a museum. Kokalis provides useful qualitative information that most of us simply don't have access to about the weapons he reviews. So often, gun reviews gush over every product. Kokalis, especially in his early reviews, isn't afraid of calling a spade a spade.

I teach the phlebotomy class at a vocational school and this is excellent material that contains the current guidelines for working in a hospital setting.

This is a great text to have in the laboratory. It not only can serve as a reference but also as a training tool. The review questions at the end of each chapter help serve as a competency check in our lab. I highly recommend this book!

This is an important story about the people who played key roles in the development of nuclear weapons. The interplay of intellectual challenge, moral reluctance, and fear of the enemy is examined in detail for numerous key players. The politics of weapons development is intertwined.

Even if you've read many of the A-bomb books (as I have), you'll find a new angle here. That angle involves the personalities of 9 of the physicists who were swept from their idyllic careers of research and teaching to create the atomic bomb. Virtually everyone of them lives to regret their participation in the Manhattan Project, with the notable exception of Edward Teller. Teller, of course, goes on to develop the H-bomb in the early 1950's and is despised by most of his former atomic bomb colleagues.
Oppenheimer, Fermi, Bethe, Bohr, Teller, Lawrence, Compton, Rabi, Szillard. By book's end these will be more than names and faces; these 9 very different, very complicated men came together for a couple of short years and were forever linked. In 1943 they thought they were saving the world. By 1946 most were afraid they may have destroyed it. VanDeMark has done a marvelous job of fitting 9 biographies into a very readable, not overly long book.

This book takes a nice example and then leads you quick step by quick step on how to get there. I recomend getting a book with cd (if getting a used book) to benefit from the lessons. It probably needs a companion idiot guide as it tends to asume some knowledge its steps are like a recipee not a learn to cook book; but like a wonderful book of recipees you'll either make art or some kind of mess...

Photoshop 6 Wow! has proven to be my primary source of learning Photoshop, and I own plenty of other books that I could have used instead. What's great about it is that you can open the book to any page and see something of interest, as the book is chock full of how-to illustrations and examples. It does not have to be read cover to cover or in sequence. The companion CD has all the tutorial files, plus presets for styles, brushes, custom shapes, gradients, and more, which you can copy to your hard drive and use from within Photoshop.
Two criticisms:
1. Certain files on the companion CD can't be opened on Windows pcs, such as \Wow Project Images\Chapter 9\454-Wow Button Samplers\Wow Button Sampler HTML\Open in Browser. The "Open in Browser" file shows no file type in Windows, and can't be opened.
2. You need to set aside time (hours, not minutes) to do the book justice. If you're in a hurry, and need to figure out a Photoshop feature or technique in 5 minutes while the boss is breathing down your neck, this book might not be your best choice. But other than this, I recommend Photoshop 6 Wow!, even to those who have upgraded to a newer version of Photoshop.

This is a virtual candy store for a Photoshop enthusiast, and one of my two favorite Photoshop books. The effects are fun and occassionally challenging. If you work through a decent portion of this book you will learn the program. Since most of the examples will work just fine in Photoshop 7, I probably will skip the next edition unless it has a lot of new material. If you know the basics of Photoshop and want to go to the next level this is a good place to start.

I purchased this book several months ago, having no experience in Photoshop. From the first I found the book overwhelming and confusing. Maybe it's my style of learning, as I was expecting a more linear style. Something like, "Okay, here's what you need to know to get started" and "Now that you know this, here's how you do that."

But this book, to me, is needlessly complicated. While it's excellent for detailed descriptions, I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. I found myself reading and re-reading descriptions and information, breaking out the highligher pen, trying to glean the basics from pages and pages of details that were, for a beginner like me, irrelevant. I say irrelevant because I was given information on things I hadn't learned yet.

I wound up purchasing other resources to learn Photoshop. Now that I have a basic understanding of the software, this book is a little more useful, though still too complicated for my taste.

There are many examples within this book that are just amazing, and this book will introduce you to ways to recreate such beautiful effects. In the process, you'll learn to unlock the power of PhotoShop.

Be warned though, this is not a book that will hand hold you and walk you through "What is a pencil tool" and "how to use it". If you know PhotoShop a little, or an intuitive knack to figure things out, then you can learn a lot from this book.

I found at least one of the guides not to work correctly across platforms (Mac OS vs. Windows), but fortunately with the CD, there were some styles that I can plug in and use immediately. I was able to add some spice to my dull web pages.

So in summary, this is not a general purpose tutorial. It will show you some spot techniques and tricks that give you inspiration and bring some techniques of the trade into your mental palette as well as increase your PhotoShop knowledge.

The Item arrived on time and in good shape . I would do buisness with this merchant again. Thanks

If there are those out there who have read: "Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Classroom in a Book" ISBN 0-201-71016-1
and disliked it as much as I did, please submit reviews of better books you've found.

I got the impression that, that book tried it's best to make sure you had very little idea of what the lesson was leading up to until the very last sentence. The problem with this method is that it makes understanding and following the lesson much more difficult because you have little idea of what it's leading up to.

Using it as a reference is pretty much impossible. You can't just pick up the book and go to a point of interest and learn that topic. It seems like you have to start at the beginning of the book just to get the sence of something in the middle or end of the book. Frankly, what a piece of crap. Thanks for any recommendations.

If you want the practice and need a step-by-step lesson, this is a good book. I did want the step-by-step practice, and I'm still glad I bought the book. However, it only tells you what to do. It's not very good at explaining why you're doing it or what exactly the overall effect will be. Also, any tool, filter, etc. that you don't learn about in the lessons, you don't really learn about at all. I think it's a great book for practice, but it's probably best used in conjunction with another book that doesn't have lessons but gives a better explanation of the tools, what they do, and when and why to use them. An example is probably Photoshop 6 For Dummies. I haven't bought it yet, but I've looked through it, and I think it will be helpful if used along with Classroom in a Book.

When I first picked up Adobe Photoshop 6.0, I almost gave up on it because I had no idea how it worked. Instead I searched around for a book to teach me how to use it. Well, Photoshop 6.0 Classroom in a Book was the right one to chose! Simple, step by step lessons teach you about each feature of 6.0. If you're brand new to Photoshop, this book will make you an expert!

First, let me say that it is very easy to pick apart any book that attempts to introduce a beginner to such a complex application program as Photoshop6. I am not an expert on Photoshop but I have invested a lot of time and money learning how to use it effectively in web development. This is an very cost effective approach to learning some of the useful features that Photoshop offers to the artist both in the Print media and the electronic web pallet.
Just remember this is starting point Photoshop is an life long pursuit if you are trying produce original quality work. If you can find a good copy used. It will be a reference book that you will continue to use years after you complete the exercises in it.

This book is a complete steal for whatever price it's now selling for. I bought it (not the limited edition, but the original) several years ago used for $8 (including shipping!) and have ever since referred to it as the best Photoshop foundation book around. (Regardless of what version of Photoshop you're currently working in.)

Make no mistake about it, this is not a casual read. It's over 1000 pages of serious information. It's black and white (except for a color gallery section in the middle), it's not printed on fancy coated paper, the cover is less than gorgeous, the book itself is large and cumbersome, each page is drowning with large amounts of type, and many of the images for the exercises are outdated and downright cheesy. But...

It is an AWESOME book. You WILL learn Photoshop if you read this. If you really, truly, actually do read it and work through all the examples (included on the CD).

I like this book because it has meat. It's not filled with fluff and marketed to turn a quick buck (I mean, seriously, look at the cover!) The content is 100% solid. (The author also provides some subtle humor and is actually pretty entertaining.)

Overall... this is the best book I've seen to take someone from being completely new to Photoshop, to being an advanced user. It lives on in my Photoshop library as a valuable reference tool.

I purchased 4 books for getting on with photoshop and thsi one stands out along with The Photoshop 6 bible. Garry runs you through al of Photoshop's powerful tools and by the end of the book you really are in a position to do things in photoshop yourself.unlike many books out there this book teaches you how to use a tool,what its advantages are and which situations to use rather than describe the tool only for achieving a particular aim in a particular tutorial.Add to this the friendly rant of the authors,the light haerted tips and remarks and professional level works,YOU GET A WINNER!
But one point to note is that this is NOT A BOOK FOR THE BEGGINER.You need to have a reasonable amount of experieance with photoshop to get the maximum out of this book.
Thanks Garry for coming out with such a great book!

This is the best computer book I have bought.
It really teach me on how to use Photoshop.
It's helpfull for the novice to the beginner. I was beginner.
What I really like about the book it's that it comes with step by step instructions and a cdrom with files you need.
It's worth every buck and also is good reference.

This book is HUGE. It is packed with useful and helpful information to guide anyone through Photoshop. The tutorials were very helpful to me in getting started with the techniques used in Photoshop. All users of Photoshop 6.0 should keep this book close by-- it is an excellent reference.

I am a programmer, not a DTP professional - therefore this review might not be good for people who do the living on DTP or photography editing.

This book seems to cover techniques how to do something, but in a strange manner. The book is too slow, which makes me very inpatient and angry, and examples (tasks) often are guided like: press ctrl T, now D, then select pen tool and draw a line (which you can't from some reason), then press this and that, and we have a new path here, now hide a layer by ctrl whatever, and so on.

The book is not organized well. It misses the global definitions at the beginning, e.g. what the path is. What is a layer? When we use it? Then there should be a simple example how and when to use it. When to link or not to link a selection with layer? When to use RGB layers, add a selection layer. And finally the same for some frequently used basic tools and effects (shadows, distortions, and whatever is important).

I have seen many people who really know Photoshop (guys who work for newspapers), and that stuff can't be learned from this book. They use different techniques, more efficient, while this book wastes your time by showing you how to do a shadow, or use a path for such a simple thing that you would never use path for. Also, the author is paying too much attention for tools like lasso, or some other selection tools, while I was interested into details of displacement maps and other effects, mixing photos and etc.

However, I have seen that marks of this book are really great - and therefore I must be very wrong because I am going to mark this book with only two stars, so forgive me on that. But I would really recommend future readers to try to borrow this book before buying it or compare with some other book, since this book is not organized well and is not leading you properly as the good book should.

Excellent book. Gives you step by step instructions on how to do some neat things with your digital photos.

This is a wordy introduction to Elements 2. Mr. Aaland provides a good rationale for improvement with photographs and how they may be accomplished. This is important - as it is not immediately obvious what improvements need to be made to a photograph when starting out in digital photography.

However, his approach is wordy - and you have to plough through a lot of (unnecessary) text to go through the individual steps. Some people like wordy explanations, others a more visual guide to a visual medium.

Secondly, and this is a personal feeling, it is clear that Mr. Aaland makes his living by writing computer manuals and not in graphics or as a photographer. The photographs supplied on the CD and in the book are of the mundane snapshot variety. This may be fine if you are simply working on mundane snapshots - however, for me (and I am sure others), I am looking for approaches to improve more artistic photographs. (If you are looking for help with this and you are visiting the UK, I recommend you buy a copy of Digital Photo magazine [not Digital Photography or other similarly named magazines] - you will get a lot of clearly, explained advice there).

So a mixed bag. If you are looking for a reasonable comprehensive 'textbook' on PE2 then consider this. If you are through the basics and are looking for a deeper explanation of advanced features and artistic management, then I suggest you look elsewhere. For me, the book falls short of my needs and interests and the CD photographs are disappointing.

Hope this helps!

Couldn't go another day without thanking you for this great "Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions" Book. After completing half of the Books Photo Exercises which gives the simplest, precise way to acheive the best professional results, I've finally learned Photoshop. This has evaded me for years spent on other learning programs. I just couldn't understand how the layers related and applied to each other for the background or how to work on them to get a final finish quality photo. The exercises were easy and understandable and fun to learn. Plus all those Plug-Ins on the CD.
Thanks,
Satisfied Customer.

I bought this book expecting the enclosed CD to be a full tutorial. It is not. If you read far enough into the fine print it does say it is a trial (read demo) copy. To my sorrow I didn't see this; all I read was "100 before images" and "follow along with the book". Sounds great, but what you get is software that shows you what the real thing WOULD do if you bought it. Legal but morally reprehensible.

I've seen the author on TechTv explaining tips with Photoshop Elements...he's good. But, he wrote the book like you already know most things instead of a step by step approach. I've taught myself more just by using Photoshop 6.0 and Photoshop Elements through trial and error. Look for another author or go to a book store and look through one of these books to see if it will help you. This author can't even explain the red eye tool...I learned on my own. Bottom line...I threw the book in the recycling container.

When I first read this book I was overwhelmed by the information and have had to struggle through all of the technical work. There is so much to learn, and much of it is technical. That said, Mr. Lynch goes out of his way to help his readers, and includes extra tools on his website as well as a forum. The extra tools alone pay for the book - he includes Curves and demonstrates how valuable this is. He also has tools to give you great photo frames, etc, with a few quick moves. If you are willing to put in hours learning to achieve his results you will be very happy with this book. If you simply wish a basic beginning book on Elements this is NOT the book for you. I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to be proficient with Elements 2. I am going to buy the Elements 3 book.

The tools were why I bought the book -- having access to Curves and Color Balance alone would have been worth it, but there are a lot more -- masking tools, color separations, -- I am just starting to appreciate how powerful these tools are -- for example, before buying this book I didn't even understand why you even wanted to separate color and luminosity, but now I use that tool on every single image I process.

The book: the book is different from any other Photoshop book I've read. The most obvious difference is that it comes with neat Power Tools. A more subtle difference is that in addition to showing you how to manipulate images using Photoshop Elements (which most Photoshop books do, or should), it also aims to deepen your understanding of your images and controlling those images using manipulation-by-Elements. For example, he walks you through a somewhat complicated procedure of making masks to isolate mid-tone colors in your image-- there's a Power Tool to do it, but if you go through the entire procedure you will learn a lot more about how your image is put together. Not to mention that it was a revelation to me that you could have that much CONTROL!

Because he aims to teach you about images and how to get the best image possible, as well as a good order in which to correct images, the book is sequential. Most Photoshop books I've seen can basically be read in any order, but this builds on things he's taught in previous chapters: for example, learning about tone in the earlier chapters is essential for understanding color manipulation in the later chapters. As part of this flow, there's information not only on digital manipulation but also on printing, which is an essential part of the process, which made me very happy. Just his (elementary?) explanation of the dpi/ppi/lpi needed for various outputs and how well you can print various pixel-size images has been really useful for me to have at my fingerprints, not even to mention the calibration tool noted by another review.

On the negative side: as someone who predominately uses Elements for retouching digital photographs, I didn't find the sections on e.g. animation all that useful. I would have much preferred to see more about calculations, which I thought could definitely have been given more space, being such a complex subject. There are a fair number of typos, though it's usually pretty easy to figure out what the right thing ought to be, and I understand his website has errata. Minor issue: I had a hard time installing the tools, and had to go to the website delineated in the book to troubleshoot. (Turned out it was for some reason having a hard time with my external hard drive; once I unplugged it, it was fine.)

I would strongly recommend NOT expecting this to be your only photoshop elements book (unless you are already an image manipulation guru, maybe). I personally have Photoshop Elements 2 for Dummies from a local book sale as well, and had read the whole thing and understood how everything worked in it before tackling this one-- I would've been lost if I'd tried to do it in the other order. I still refer to Dummies above this book when I want to know quickly how to do something simple or want to know what some random special effect does, neither of which are the purposes of this book.

This book gives back to you what you put into it; the more you try to understand what is really going on, the more you will get out of it. To me, this is the hallmark of a great book; I've reread it twice already and am still learning more. To others, it may not be what you are looking for, particularly if you want quick recipes or quick fixes. If you've read my examples above and you're thinking, "Gosh, that sounds like it might be sort of dense... but worth it to really understand images and controlling images better," this book may be perfect for you, as it was for me. If you're thinking, "Nuts, I just want a couple of auto-buttons to press to get cool effects or quickly fix everything," this book is not for you.

But if you have Elements 2 and are even THINKING of upgrading to full Photoshop (which I was), get this book first!

After five nights of really trying so hard to get through this book...and I did try, I finally decided I was so lost it was time to quit and try some other book. I know I am not at the level I want to be in Elements, but just going through steps that make no sense with this book finally got to where it was not worth the effort. I'm putting this book on the shelf and finding one that doesn't assume I know the steps he leaves out. I'm very dissappointed because I really need to know this stuff :(((

First must say all the raves you see are from professionals that have used other systems and maybe good friends of the author, as some of the reviews said, mistakes, no clear definition of way to go, confusing, believe the author once sent me an answer to a question stating he has condensed a book of 950 pages into this, Well unless your an photographic, or layout person, this book too confusing for someone starting out, I would not recommend this book to first timers

I have nothing but praise for this densely-packed book. Seek and ye shall find! The information level is as comprehensive as one could wish: Beware though, very few empty words, read carefully! Providing the hidden elements for Photoshop Elements users is an invaluable attribute.Use of these tools brings us into the realm of the full-fledged Photoshop. Thanks, Richard Lynch!