Rating: 
Summary: Excellent PS "Cookbook", Great for beginners
Review: Adobe is used to having a lot of books written on its products. They tend to be the most complex of any program on the market, but it is because they are so powerful. If you have got the Photoshop bug and can't make pretty changes to your pictures or projects, this is a good book to start with!!!Yes it will not teach you a lot of the "Why???" of Photoshop, that can take some years to learn anyway. A lot of Photoshop books come it two groups, those that know Photoshop and those who don't. Most of those that are for the expert expect you to know your Gaussian Blur from your Unsharp Mask and what kind of effect it will have on your picture. Photoshop "cookbooks" as some have called them teach by example, this author's "recipe's" are easy to follow and will give hints in the margins to learn more indepth or customize. Again you might be mimicing the author, but sometimes that is all you need to feel good about your investment in Photoshop. This book was a complete rewrite from the Photoshop 7 book, I own both because both have a lot to offer that was different enough to almost consider them volumes 1 & 2. Also if you are just needing digital photographry help, I would check out Scott Kelby's books on just digital photographry.
Rating: 
Summary: You really read the book and still gave it 5 stars?
Review: After receiving this book, I can't believe what the positive reviewers are saying. It's like they are spouting jacket copy without having actually gone through the book carefully.
I have to agree with the reviewers who say that these "tricks" aren't anything special. "Closely guarded secrets" my eye. The effects included in this book are tired and cliched, and easy to figure out from PREVIOUS manuals about Photoshop!
What a waste of money. Mr. Kelby certainly is a shrewd businessman, but I've become more and more disenchanted with his books over the years. I also plan to return this, and probably won't buy any others in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Cool Effects = Good Book
Review: As with the previous versions of ths book, Kelby does not let us down. This book takes off where D&DT for Photoshop 7 took off. Kelby's approach to writing these books is excellent. He has a great sense of humor throughout all of his books. What makes this book so helpful is that it gives you an easy step-by-step instruction to putting together many of today's widely used or popular effects.
My only complaint is that some of the effects he chose to recreate are a little lame, almost too easy to recreate if you try at all. Though many of these effects build on more advanced techniques, a user with a rough experience in Photoshop can recreate most of the effects with easy.
Rating:
Summary: A great idea book
Review: Don't listen to Don from Florida. No book can include fonts - THAT'S ILLEGAL! More importantly, Don has missed the point. Scott Kelby's book is demonstating techniques that can be applied to ANY font, not just the fonts used in the book. I'm not sure how he missed that, but I was able to take the techniques shown in the book and make MY fonts look very cool. If I was only able to use a technique on one specific font, that would make for a pretty lame technique. That's not the way this book works.
The Down & Dirty Tricks book gave me lots of great ideas that I can adapt and make my own. I've only begun to scratch the surface with this book and it's already been well worth the money!
Highly recommended!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Good Dirty Tricks
Review: Even though the author admits that this book is really just for Windows users and that he decided not to cover the PC version and the Mac version in one book, it is still workable for the Mac user. And as a Mac user, I still found this to be one of the most interesting reference books that I have read. I really liked the concept of being able to jump-in-anywhere within the book - just find a technique of interest and begin. As the author mentions in the "preamble" (introduction), he wrote this book so that any user, at any level of Photoshop Elements experience, could jump right in and create these special effects. He accomplishes this goal by using easy to follow step-by-step instructions, with hundreds of full color examples from cover to cover. For example, if you want to add a person to an existing image, produce great advertising effects, colorize a black-and-white image, utilize 3D for packaging effects, or add special edge effects to your photos, then this book is for you. Each of the 75 special effects listed in the table of contents are fully explained in Scott Kelby's easy to understand style and sense of humor. These proven special effects or tricks are great for the professional looking for ways to present their product with today's hottest photographic effects and to do it with the least amount of effort and time. Although this is an outstanding, well written, step-by-step book with many photographic tips and secrets, it is written for the professional user of Photoshop Elements and is beyond the needs of most digital camera owners who only use the camera for personal use.
Rating:
Summary: Adobe PhotoShop CS Down & Dirty Tricks
Review: Excellent book well worth the price. The text really extends the use of PhotoShop.
Rating:
Summary: A sure-fire resource to add snap and sizzle to one's images
Review: From Scott Kelby (the editor of "Photoshop Magazine"), Photoshop Cs Down & Dirty Tricks is a guide offering step-by-step walkthroughs for techniques that can create eye-catching digital images using Photoshop - from 3D effects that don't require a 3D program to transforming ordinary snapshots into museum-quality prints to tricks uses by professional photographers and much more. Full-color images, quick tips on the sidebar of every page, and instructions that are detailed down to each click of the mouse pack this user-friendly guide for amateur and professional alike. An index allows for quick and easy lookup of various topics. A sure-fire resource to add snap and sizzle to one's digital images!
Rating:
Summary: Another good Kelby Book
Review: Has step-by-step instructions on how to create a variety of cool effects you see in today's websites and advertising. Right to the point. A bit more advanced than ""The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers" by Kelby, but then again this book is more about creating special effects and doing cool tricks to replicate what high-dollar CS designers can do, vs. general photo manipulation. A great addition to your CS reference library.
Rating:
Summary: Like Two Books in One
Review: Here is another great book from the legendary Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User Magazine. For those of you who bought his Photoshop 7 Down & Dirty Tricks, this is not a repeat. He says he trashed every technique from the Photoshop 7 version and started from scratch with this one. I really like the layout of it. It's like two books in one. The pages are white with tan vertical strips almost two inches wide. In the white sections are the step-by-step, how-to instructions, with plenty of images that show the progress of each step. The tan sidebars contain Quick Tips. I love the one on page 74. It says, "Want some cool metal gradients? You've already got 'em!" Then it goes on to explain how to access them. There are some really cool lessons, such as the one on popping out of a photo on page 23, Edge Collage technique on page 39, the one on making a filmstrip template on page 192, and the one on how to make a photo cube on page 230. There are multiple lessons on different 3-D effects, lots of cool type effects, and Advertising effects, like fancy product shot backgrounds, adding a window to another place and dividing a photo into puzzle pieces. This book is fine for beginners, as the first time he has you do a new task, like create a layer, he tells in detail how to do it. But he doesn't tell you how to do it in every lesson, so the more advanced folks won't get bogged down and bored. And the Quick Tips in the sidebars alone are worth the price of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Like Two Books in One
Review: Here is another great book from the legendary Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User Magazine. For those of you who bought his Photoshop 7 Down & Dirty Tricks, this is not a repeat. He says he trashed every technique from the Photoshop 7 version and started from scratch with this one. I really like the layout of it. It's like two books in one. The pages are white with tan vertical strips almost two inches wide. In the white sections are the step-by-step, how-to instructions, with plenty of images that show the progress of each step. The tan sidebars contain Quick Tips. I love the one on page 74. It says, "Want some cool metal gradients? You've already got 'em!" Then it goes on to explain how to access them. There are some really cool lessons, such as the one on popping out of a photo on page 23, Edge Collage technique on page 39, the one on making a filmstrip template on page 192, and the one on how to make a photo cube on page 230. There are multiple lessons on different 3-D effects, lots of cool type effects, and Advertising effects, like fancy product shot backgrounds, adding a window to another place and dividing a photo into puzzle pieces. This book is fine for beginners, as the first time he has you do a new task, like create a layer, he tells in detail how to do it. But he doesn't tell you how to do it in every lesson, so the more advanced folks won't get bogged down and bored. And the Quick Tips in the sidebars alone are worth the price of the book.
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