Photoshop CS Bible

Rating:
Summary: The greatest book...ever written.
Review: Deke McClelland has simply knocked this one out of the park. Out of the park - and into outer space. I'm serious.

This book makes me weep like reading some kind of Russian novel. I'm not kidding around. If states begin to allow people to marry books (and seriously folks, it's not far off, am I right?), then I would get on bended knee and propose to the Photoshop CS Bible, Standard edition. It has given me the happiest months of my life.

The magic is still there. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Lives Up to Its Name
Review: I have struggled with Photoshop for years. Now mind you, I'm not a graphics professional, but I need good raster graphics for software and video projects that I produce.

As anyone who has picked up Photoshop can tell you, it's anything but intuitive. Incredibly powerful, but hardly something one can pick up by groping around. I slogged through the Photoshop Classroom In A Book when I tried Photoshop 6, and it was adequate, but not comprehensive enough.

A month ago, I decided to give Photoshop one more try, so I upgraded to Photosohop CS and bought this book. I love both the program and the book. Photosohp is still as unintuitive as ever, but McClelland's book does a nice job of explaining the basics and then providing walk-throughs for most of the tasks one would normally perform in Photoshop.

I put the book to the test compositing a photograph with a dingy gray sky to a shot of a blue sky with white, puffy clouds. The original photograph has large areas of sky showing through trees, and I had never been able to re-sky a picture that complex. Using masking and color range selections, I got the task done in about fifteen minutes flat. Needless to say, I was impressed. I'm beginning to understand why people get hooked on Photoshop.

If you're a novice to intermediate user, or if you are looking for a ready reference for tasks you don't perform very often, then this book is well worth a look. It has earned a prominent place on my bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Hold on a minute
Review: I just had a quick look at my just arrived copy of "PhotoshopCS Bible" and I've got
to say that I'm disappointed.

It IS the Photoshop "CS" Bible and the single and most important change
between CS and Photoshop 7 is the Camera RAW converter. Well don't expect
much from this thousand page book if you are looking for Camera RAW
information.

The author Deke McClelland, starts off the skimpy Camera RAW section - and it
takes until page 942 to get there - with a disclaimer that "The Camera RAW
dialog box is a professional-level tool, which is why I cover it in obsessive detail
in the Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition."

How nice. It's a 1000+ page book, but it isn't "professional", and being a
peasant, I don't get the benefit of the "obsessive detail" that I thought I was
buying. He does cover "the basic stuff" but that "ain't what I paid for".

What this book seems to be, is a cheap and dirty revision to McClelland's
Photoshop 7 "Bible", and that's why I'm sending my copy back. If what
McClelland says is true, I'll just wait for someone to write a book specifically on
Camera RAW, and it won't be him.

Now the rest of the book may be great. But if you have a previous edition you'd
be well served to save your money.

Rating:
Summary: Reasonable walkthrough, needs color and better examples
Review: This book has a very thorough walkthrough of all of the features of CS. But the majority of the book is in black and white, while competitive books are in full color and a lot shorter. There are two color inserts that show the color versions of what is explained in the rest of the book. The examples are not great either. In particular the filter examples seem to have been picked to show the most dramatic effect of the filter, as opposed to an optimal use of the filter to show it in it's best form. I recommend Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One instead.