Rating: 
Summary: Perfect Book for beginners
Review: a perfect book for beginners. easy to understand and I like the way the lessons are arranged.
Rating: 
Summary: This one is definately for beginners
Review: Adobe has done a fine job with this book, but I would not suggest this one for anyone with a good working background of Adobe Photoshop. One could find practically the same information in the user's guide that comes with the program. I read the other reviews and bought it thinking I would find some interesting information within, but I did not. I would still rate this book high for the novice or for some one using Photoshop for the first time, under these circumstances this book would be a great help.
Rating: 
Summary: This book contains countless omissions!
Review: Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Classroom in a Book provides a wealth of information for no one, but intermediate to advanced users.If you are a beginner, please consider another book. Since this book is written by the Adobe staff, the book uses an impersonal voice, and does not explain why things should be done the way they were done in the book. You just follow directions and be impressed about what they TOLD you to do, but never get to play around with it yourself. You may rather be confused and lost, if you are just starting to use the application. In the tour along, they are four major omissions within the first 25 pages! If you are confident and believe that you can work without directions, you may benefit from this book. I consider myself an intermediate user but on one omission I spent nearly nearly half an hour to figure out how to continue. However, the contents of the book is quite helpful to those who already know how to use Adobe Photoshop. I tried to report those omissions to Adobe Press, but the Adobe Systems website gave no access for such reports. What a poor customer feedback system!
Rating:
Summary: The best way to tearn Adobe Products
Review: As with the rest of the "Classroom in a Book" series, this is probably the best way for a beginner to learn Adobe Products. In addition to being great for beginners the book has a couple of chapters that may help the more advanced users. The chapters on Image ready were particularly useful for me. (The only thing I don't understand is why they don't come with the software. I think after paying several hundred dollars Adobe shouldn't charge extra for a well written manual.)
Rating: 
Summary: An average addition to the Photoshop manual
Review: Don't expect to pass the ACE [Adobe Certified Expert] exam with this book alone, unless you are a seasoned Photoshop guru. I studied this book cover to cover and memorized all the lessons in the back of each chapter, and I only passed the ACE exam by a handful of questions [I got a 78%]. Don't get me wrong, this book is an OK addition to the library as a supplement to the Photoshop 5.5 manual, but it is not as effective at teaching the more useful techniques. I prefer the "Photoshop WOW! Book" style - densely packed with nothing but page after page of useful tips, tricks, how-to's, and techiniques of the masters. This is not that book.
Rating:
Summary: An average addition to the Photoshop manual
Review: Don't expect to pass the ACE [Adobe Certified Expert] exam with this book alone, unless you are a seasoned Photoshop guru. I studied this book cover to cover and memorized all the lessons in the back of each chapter, and I only passed the ACE exam by a handful of questions [I got a 78%]. Don't get me wrong, this book is an OK addition to the library as a supplement to the Photoshop 5.5 manual, but it is not as effective at teaching the more useful techniques. I prefer the "Photoshop WOW! Book" style - densely packed with nothing but page after page of useful tips, tricks, how-to's, and techiniques of the masters. This is not that book.
Rating:
Summary: Great as a classroom book
Review: I have helped teach a workshop using this book. The book explores what is possible in photoshop and is definately NOT a primer for the Photoshop Certification exam. What you need to prepare for certification is the Adobe Photoshop Certification Guide and a familiarity with Photoshop. The students do very well on their own with CIB 5.5 until they run into a glitch. Usually this occurs because they haven't read the text closely. Sometimes the glitch is a program preference that isn't mentioned or explained in the book or a problem navigating in their own computer. A troubleshooting section would make this book a better teacher. The addition of Adobe Image Ready 2.0 is extremely helpful and I think worth the price of the 5.5 version even if you already have 5.0 CIB. The one thing I do miss is the 4.0 chapter on layers (the beach bunny), I think it illustrated the uses of layers more directly (and it was aesthetically a better complete image). Honestly, CIB 5.5 is not a Photoshop Bible but a tool to help you learn what Photoshop is about. I would recommend this book for people who have problem solving skills and the ambition to learn what photoshop can do. This is an excellent book for beginners (who at least know how to navigate their computer).
Rating:
Summary: good book for beginner, not for exam
Review: I have the ambition to learn photoshop for a long time; however, i can't find good books on it. some of them only deal with how to prepare for the photoshop cert exam while some of them just doesn't teach you well.
This book teach beginners on concepts of layers, masking, photo retouching, selections, animations, painting and paths. It has a lot of hand-holding and you can see this point in the ways they arrange the lessons, so you will never get lost in the examples. The examples the book used is very illustrative and practical in the real world. Besdies, it gives you many little photoshop tips which are particularly helpful.
Actually, i would give this book a 5 star rating if it has
(1) some practical exercies (e.g. give us a photo or art work and tell us to do some tasks on it) at the end of the book; yes, this book has some but the questions are just some concept questions.
(2) a chapter to introduce filter and the effects on layers.
Since the exercies are not really testing how much you get from the lesson, you have to find something to work on and test if you really get the material.
Rating:
Summary: An good book for beginner.
Review: I have used this book as a textbook in my beginning Photoshop class. This is a good book for beginners since it covers most of the basic techniques. The lessons are easy to follow and after you finish the book, you have a pretty good idea about Photoshop. There are 2 things I didn't like too much. #1: The end files in the CD Rom doesn't match with the instruction i.e. if you follow the instruction in the book, you can't possible get the exact result as the end file, and #2, the chapter about Photo retouch is not throughout enough. To me, there is a better way to achieve the same result as in the book without going through all the unneccessary steps such as the sponge tools, the color replacement tools.
Rating:
Summary: Problem with Page 109-Page 111
Review: I just read two lessons, and between page 109-page 111, there are a few paragraphs on "Creating evenly spaced buttons for a web page". Every time I tried to drag the styles on to view inside ImageReady, the style is applied to the while view swallowing EVERY button in the view. I don't know whether the editors tested the instructions thoroughly.
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