Rating: 
Summary: If You Can Only Afford ONE Photoshop Book ...
Review: At over 900 pages, this book is formidable. Some beginners may be intimidated by its sheer size and weight. But, if you want thorough coverage of Photoshop CS, how to set it up, use it, tweak it and troubleshoot problems with it, then this is the book for you.
I was surprised that they started out by telling you how to build your "Photoshop System." They give advice on choosing your platform, and what you need in terms of horsepower (GHz), OS, RAM, etc. They go on to give advice on upgrading to CS and tell you what's new. (And they tell you where to find some "Easter Eggs.")
At page 555 they continue the "set-up" theme with sections on capturing images and building a digital workflow. "Capturing" covers digital cameras, scanners and photo CDs, with good advice on how to get the best image capture into Photoshop. "Building a Digital Workflow" explains the essentials of "Camera Raw," metadata and the File Browser to manage you photos. (If you're trying to capture b/w line art, it's better to scan as a high res grayscale and then use sharpening and threshold.)
They do a good job at explaining bitmaps vs. vectors, and how resampling or changing image modes affects your document. (You should use "Bicubic Smoother" for upsampling and "Bicubic Sharper" for downsampling.)
Since Bruce Fraser is co-author, the 100+ pages on color theory and management are excellent. (There are over 60 more pages on color correction, 50 more pages on spot color and duotones and yet another 50 additional pages on tonal correction.) If you buy this book, you don't need an additional book on color management.
I personally got a lot out of Chapter 10, which covers sharpening. It gave me a better understanding of how it works and how to do a better job when retouching photos. I plan to re-visit page 626 when I need to convert color images to grayscale. And page 636 has a technique to use the clone tool and stroked paths to automate removal of powerlines, long scratches, etc.!
Of course, they cover more stuff, like getting more detail in shadows, text and typography, photomerge hidden features, and how to apply those nifty filters and effects.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent intermediate/advanced Photoshopping
Review: At the outset, the authors say that this is not the book for tips and tricks on how to get the coolest special effects, but rather a book for moving images through Photoshop, from image acquisition through final output. I'd add that neither is it a book for the raw newcomer looking for a handholding step-by-step guide to the basics. It is instead a book for the person who's past the basics and wants down-to-earth, practical advice on how to move to the next stage - the creation of great images using this superb piece of software.
Almost every page of this book has at least one valuable nugget of information. The authors cite example after example from their personal experience. Most of the time, they not only suggest what you should do, they tell you why. It's hard to pick out one chapter or section to praise, because they're uniformly excellent.
One minor quibble - the authors are unapologetic Mac users, and they do not even follow the normal practice of giving keyboard shortcuts for both Mac and Windows environments. Also, the simple scripting example is in Applescript instead of the cross-platform Javascript. But if you can keep in your mind that Option means Alt and Command means Control, this will not detract from the value of this superb book.
Rating:
Summary: The Right Stuff
Review: Blatner and Fraser have the right stuff. This book is based on what photographers need, unlike many of the Photoshop after market manuals. This is the text to use for digital photographers. Inspiring (technically) for the students and the instructor.
Rating:
Summary: Great investment for serious Photoshop users
Review: I received my copy this week and I couldn't be happier with my purchase.I especially like the fact that it isn't written for beginners as there are more than enough books to thrill and inspire those folks - like the Adobe Classroom In a Book series. The information provided here is solid, in-depth and well-explained.
Rating:
Summary: Well written clarifications of complex issues
Review: I wouldn't write this except for the fact that nobody else has mentioned this book's major strength. It is exceptionally well written. It is quite obvious that the authors have taught this material in the "real world".
It addresses tasks that we need to perform but often can't even define. It follows with examples and explanations that have wider applications. The result is a real education. You understand how to think about digital images and where to begin to find ways to your objectives.
A lot of people who have made one picture in Photoshop write books on how to be an artist and "all you have to do is..." drivel. This book is not an ego trip for an amateur writer. It is insightful and should motivate you to make photographs and eventually use more than the 2% of your digital camera's potential that you now use.
If you want a sample of what to expect, look up Bruce Fraser and you'll find some of his articles on-line. Try http://www.creativepro.com/author/home/40.html. If this stuff makes sense to you, you should buy this book. If it seems over your head, study it until you understand it, then buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Great if you don't own the previous edition
Review: If you don't own the previous edition, this is a great book. If you own Real World Photoshop 7, there's not a lot new here. Save your hard earned money.
Rating:
Summary: Conquering PhotoshopCS
Review: Real World Adobe Photoshop CS is a hefty tome with over 900 pages. To some that might be a curse; to others like myself, a blessing because we need the detail that leads to understanding. This is not a book that is in the `cook book' style, that is, one in which the authors provide a series of instructions (like recipes) to do this, do that, set this to this value, set that to that value, click here, click there, and, viola, success. There may be some success in this approach, but there is very little understanding. As I look back on my previous experiences in trying to learn Photoshop, this was the style of book I usually chose. Yes, I was able to do some wonderful things in Photoshop, but really did not understand what or why I was doing certain things in the program. Thus, the next time I tried to do something, I was fairly lost, having no basic understanding of the program itself. In a nutshell, this book is both an extensive learning tool and reference volume in one. Their approach to learning is to first ensure that the reader is well grounded in several basic concepts that underlie all successful attempts at working with image editing. These concepts, Image Essentials, Color Essentials and Color Settings, form the bedrock of most, if not all, understanding of image editing programs. Do they make it easy? Not necessarily, but they do make sure that you do have access to a complete treatise on each of these subjects. Woven into this material, is their experience in the `Real World' of imaging, thus furnishing the reader with solid reasons why this or that is important. As the authors point out through out the text, Photoshop is an extensive program. Even a book this size cannot cover every little aspect of it. Only by obtaining the basics from a book like this and using that knowledge to build experience can one hope to become proficient in the real world of Photoshop. David Blatner and Bruce Fraser make that `Real World' more understandable than most.
Rating:
Summary: Very in-depth
Review: This book gives extremely in-depth coverage to topics that cover the gamut from the basic of images and color spaces, through to image editing, filters, typography and finally output. The coverage is very in-depth. This is not a step-by-step book. The idea is to give you a fundamental understanding of the technology and then show it's application in Photoshop. The sections on building selections and using the sharpening features are particular standouts.
If you are the type of person who learns by understanding the fundamentals and not a raw process then it's a tossup between this book and Photoshop CS Artistry. The latter is a little more terse in it's style. This book is more relaxed in style so it's a little easier to follow.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome book!
Review: This is an advanced level book, but don't shy away from it if you are intermediate. Curves, levels, histograms, etc. are all very well covered here. It seems much more concerned with image quality and color correction than special effects. Walk through the RAW format, color spaces, high-level sharpening. The content of this book is displayed with a nice balance of images to text. I'm really just starting it, but I've skimmed through enough to give you this review. Hell, I already know more than a dozen new keyboard shortcuts, because it just seemed to stick in my memory the way it was presented. BTW, I paid 50 bucks at the local bookstore because I wanted it right away.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome book!
Review: This is an advanced level book, but don't shy away from it if you are intermediate. Curves, levels, histograms, etc. are all very well covered here. It seems much more concerned with image quality than special effects. Walk through the RAW format, color spaces, high-level sharpening. The content of this book is displayed with a nice balance of images to text. I'm really just starting it, but I've skimmed through enough to give you this review. Hell, I already know more than a dozen new keyboard shortcuts, because it just seemed to stick in my memory the way it was presented. BTW, I paid 50 bucks at the local bookstore because I wanted it right away.
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