Rating: 
Summary: 50 Fast Digital Photo Techniques by Gregory George
Review: I really can't recommend this book - the information is dated and succeeds in very few places. There's 50 examples here, but they're so elementary that you can't really call them "techniques". I think the "help" search menu in Elements could do the same job.I bought this book hoping to learn some techniques to better my digital darkroom, but the book was so poorly organized and assembled, I was left feeling jipped. For example, the author might as well have left all the b&w example images off his pages - the center color examples are better, but really should've been intermixed with the corresponding chapters. I'd look at the example images and since they were in b&w, you often couldn't tell the difference between the before and after images.
Also, nearly 5-10 of his techniques are basically about applying filters. Ooh great, go to filter-sharpening - wabam. Thanks, but that's not why I thought I was buying the book.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh on this book, but I really can't escape the feeling that something just wasn't "right" with the way this book flowed. When I finished it, I felt it had low quality production value written all over it.
Rating: 
Summary: Dated And Doesn't Succeed In A Lot Of Places...
Review: I really can't recommend this book - the information is dated and succeeds in very few places. There's 50 examples here, but they're so elementary that you can't really call them "techniques". I think the "help" search menu in Elements could do the same job.
I bought this book hoping to learn some techniques to better my digital darkroom, but the book was so poorly organized and assembled, I was left feeling jipped. For example, the author might as well have left all the b&w example images off his pages - the center color examples are better, but really should've been intermixed with the corresponding chapters. I'd look at the example images and since they were in b&w, you often couldn't tell the difference between the before and after images.
Also, nearly 5-10 of his techniques are basically about applying filters. Ooh great, go to filter-sharpening - wabam. Thanks, but that's not why I thought I was buying the book.
Perhaps I'm being too harsh on this book, but I really can't escape the feeling that something just wasn't "right" with the way this book flowed. When I finished it, I felt it had low quality production value written all over it.
Rating: 
Summary: Very helpful in getting the best of your digital images
Review: I've bought 2 books on digital photography, this one and the "Complete digital photography". My intention at the time of ordering was to buy a book to learn more about hardware features of digital camera, and how to combine different settings to get the best shots. I thought: "I've got an excellent Canon G2 camera, and the photos it makes are just too fine to edit them with any image processing software". Nevertheless, I ordered this book because it had a very good rating.
To my surprise, the "complete digital photography" did not came out to be of any use for me, because my limited (as I thought before) knowledge of digital camera features was really quite good, and this book (and I guess oll of this kind) is oriented on ONLY THE BEGINNERS in d-photography. Besides, the CD supplied with the book contained images of poor quality.
Contrary to this book, the "50 fast digital photo techniques" came out to be very useful, as it adresses few but VERY USEFUL methods to greatly improve the quality of a digital photo, including advice how to eliminate color cast, a very new (to me) way to make the photo more sharp etc. The great thing about this book is that it contains a CD with 100 photos of a very high quality and size: 50 original photos, and 50 "corrected" photos. There are 50 lessons in the book, and each lesson addresses one specific photo. There is also a very particular instruction how to correct the original photo by YOURSELF to get the final image.
Finally I should say that because I have to shoot too many photos without having enough time to set proper settings on the camera, this book helped me to make an excellent photos of those original shots wich I wanted to delete before.
Rating: 
Summary: It Accomplishes Its Purpose
Review: It teaches you fifty techniques. It teaches them fast. It does not give much explanation on why certain settings for filters, hue, and saturation were used instead of others, but you can experiment them by yourself. I got a kick out of it.
Rating:
Summary: Dissapointed in cover and description
Review: Looking at the book's cover and at the now defunct editor's description, there was no indication this book was primarily aimed at - and indeed was written for - Photoshop Elements users. The copy said it was also for Photoshop users but it only covers through version 6 and the introduction says using applications other than Elements for the actions described may not work.
I've not used Elements so I have no idea whether the book will be helpful there. It's certainly not helpful for me.
I'm a professional using Photoshop CS and thought some of the tips might be worthwhile. I also use PaintShopPro 8. I thought some of this book might be worthwhile for me but I'm nothing but dissapointed.
Rating:
Summary: A How-To Companion to Adobe Photoshop Elements
Review: Most computer software companion books are merely reinterpretations of the user manual. Gregory Georges' book is that rare exception: a truly useful extension of the user manual that shows you how to put the software to everyday use.
Photoshop Elements is Adobe's new consumer version of the Photoshop image editing program. As consumer publications point out, Photoshop Elements may be superior to the full version for some users, since it contains shortcuts -- "recipes" -- not offered in the professional version.
The weak link in Photoshop Elements is the user guide. The manual is extremely detailed from a technical standpoint -- a throwback to the detailed user guides of a decade ago. But despite an abundance of on-line tutorials, it falls short in showing users how to harness the program's power by putting it to practical use.
That's where this book and its companion CD-ROM come in. The author presents 50 common scenarios and provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to resolve each problem. Each lesson is formatted in a style that allows the reader to move from the macro to the micro level with ease. The before-and-after images on the CD-ROM allow the reader to duplicate the solutions while learning the software program. The examples are real-world, and the solutions are adequately explained and illustrated.
As a bonus, the CD-ROM includes try-out versions of Adobe Elements and two competing packages, JASC Paint Shop Pro and Ulead Photo Impact. Thus, it doubles as a way to use and compare three image editing programs before you lay out serious money.
50 FAST DIGITAL PHOTO TECHNIQUES does just what it promises to do, and it does it extremely well. It's the sort of practical how-to manual that all serious software programs deserve, but that few get. Even without the bundled examples and try-out software, it's a great value.
