Real World Adobe Photoshop 7

Rating:
Summary: Gets My Highest Recommendation!
Review: When I purchased PS7, I knew that the standard manual was not going to cut it. I then began my search for a real guide to PS 7. After considering many different books, I settled on this one.

I consider myself to be an advanced amateur photographer and my equipment includes a digital SLR. This book is helping me to get the most out of my camera.

I have used a few different photo editing software packages but was new to PS7. Using tutorials that I found on the WEB, I was able to do some basic editing but wanted to know much more. Well, "Real World Adobe Photoshop 7" is a treasure trove of information.

The book is easy to read and the occasional humor makes the journey through the book even more enjoyable. The book is full of tips and "how-tos". Note that this book is NOT a step by step tutorial with a CD where you get to practice on someone else's photos. I wanted a how-to guide where I could immediately apply the technique to my own photos - and this book fulfills that need. I have no desire to waste time on someone else's images.

"Real World" includes chapters on color management, curves and levels, sharpening, printing, etc. The instructions on profiling using Adobe Gamma were the best I've seen. I thought I already knew something about USM and sharpening until I read that chapter. Do you convert from RGB to LAB and back again when you apply USM? Well, that may not be a good idea. Did you know that you can sharpen very effectively without USM by using Layers? There is so much more I could mention but hopefully this gives you a little flavor for the book. I also like that the book provides instructions for more than one way (sometimes many ways) of accomplishing a task. In this way, you can try them all and determine what's best for your workflow.

So, what about negatives? The authors wrote the book from a MAC perspective. This is clearly mentioned up front and occasionally elsewhere when there are functional differences. At other times however, you will find that their descriptions do not exactly match what you are seeing on your PC. I found this to be very minor but wanted to mention it here, just in case.

Also, I would not recommend this book for true PS beginners. The authors do assume a certain pre-level of knowledge.

If you want the get the most out of PS7 or want to learn alternative (better) ways of doing something, you won't regret this purchase. Thanks to this book, I'm able to give advice to others regarding PS7 questions and problems.