2 items found in Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CS: Classroom in a Book

Adobe Systems

Adobe Press, 2004

Normally I'm wary of instruction books that carry an "official" title from the producer of software, but several Photoshop users strongly recommended this book to me - and they were right. It's superb. I have used Macromedia's Fireworks for many years, and was completely at a loss trying to find my way around Photoshop. Everything looks so familiar, but often works in a completely different way. This book had me doing things with ease in no time at all, and made me realize why Photoshop has such a loyal following. Many of Photoshop's features make Fireworks pale by comparison.

What's pleasing about this book is that, although it's very friendly towards complete newcomers to Photoshop like myself, it doesn't waste any time before getting into sophisticated techniques. Consequently, it's likely to be of just as much value to advanced users wanting to get to know the new features of Photoshop CS. The book comes with a CD-ROM containing all the images for the exercises, and most of them are stunning.

Because Photoshop's core user base originated with print designers, a couple of chapters focus on issues that will be of less interest to web designers, such as working with CYMK separation. Several chapters, though, are devoted to creating images specially for the web in both Photoshop and Image Ready, which comes bundled with it. There's also a chapter on colour adjustment for monitors running on the Windows and Mac platforms.

The problem with Photoshop is that it's such a massive program, with so many features, I found I was beginning to forget things the deeper I moved into the book. I'm going to have to come back to it again and again until I learn to stand more on my own feet with Photoshop. The combination of the clear writing and beautiful images will make that a pleasure, not a chore.

Photoshop CS: Down & Dirty Tricks

Scott Kelby

New Riders, 2003

Scott Kelby is a prolific writer, who specializes in quick, straight-to-the-point instructions. He's the editor of the Killer Tips series of books for New Riders, and this 300-page book contains one on virtually every page - and that's just in the margin! The main focus of the book is 55 mini-projects that teach you how to create sophisticated effects in Photoshop CS with the minimum of effort.

Often with writers that pump out a large number of books, the effects are either cheesy or "interesting, but what would I use it for?" Not so with this book. There are lots of text and photo manipulation techniques here that I'm dying to put to use. The instructions are very easy to follow, and the book's deliberately designed to be dipped into, rather than read in sequence from cover to cover. There's no CD-ROM, but you can download all the images to practise on. I found, however, I was just as happy trying out the same effects on images of my own. That way, you learn more, and get a better idea of the suitability of applying a particular technique to an image.

In addition to some very nice type effects, there are techniques for highlighting or drawing the eye to focus on a particular part of an image, tips on how to reproduce some of the Mac acqua effects, and applying images to a 3D cube. Some can be accomplished in a couple of minutes. Others take a bit longer, but I've not come across any yet that have had me banging me head trying to fathom out why it doesn't work the way Scott Kelby says it will.

I think I'll be playing with this for a long time to come. Who knows? One day I may even get round to redesigning my own site with some of the things I've learned!