Rating: 
Summary: The Best Book To Start With
Review: Anyone eager to find his way around in Photoshop should start with this book.It is concise, straigtforward and goes well beyond just a quickstart. I just couldn't believe what I got for that price.Anybody writting a book at such a level should learn from Elaine and Peter, cause this is the most important phase of learning.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Start Here
Review: As a technical writer who is new to Photoshop but generally experienced with software documentation, I was very disappointed in this book. As other reviewers have pointed out, this is more of a reference guide than a "QuickStart Guide" (which implies that it is for beginners). There are almost no explanations of how the various features and controls work together, nor why you would want to use one over another. If I was an experienced user looking for information on a specific item, I could hardly do better. As a new user looking for an introduction, I could hardly do worse!
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference Guide
Review: As an eBook developer, I needed to get up to date with PhotoShop really quick. I found this book quite helpful.The book does an excellent job introducing and explaining the many facets of PhotoShop. That being said, I think the book does an inadequate job explaining the different image/file formats. Also, by jumping right into things, a lot of a topic's essential intoductory information is left out. I had a problem with rendering PNG images for a certain eBook format. Adobe's help file in PhotoShop 6.0, for saving PNG files has incorrect information. (It was applicable for 5.5) After numerous calls to Adobe support, I was left with the suggestion, "Go get 5.5." The book introduced me to ImageReady3 and subsequently I learned the difference between PNG-8 and PNG-24 files. The solution was found. Not every basic thing is covered. For example, a bitmap image can not be saved as a JPEG. It must be converted to a different mode (like grayscale) first. All in all, an excellent book with tons of useful information. Go buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Frustrating book
Review: As another reviewer has noted this is a frustrating book to beging PS 6 with. Rather than taking you one step at a time the authors throw so much information at the reader that you get bogged down with so many details some of which are very poorly explained. This is definately not a book for beginners. Very poor learning design as I have found out with other so called Quick Start titles. A waste of money actually.
Rating: 
Summary: A Very Poor Guide
Review: As the reviewer D Helfrich noted above, while the Visual Quickstart Guides are generally very good, this one isn't. It's worse than useless. After a couple of hours with this book you will regret ever getting involved with Photoshop. Your only hope will be to open the online help. Photoshop is a great program. But you'll never learn it if you start with this wretched tome. Just my own experience. Try Photoshop 6 Artistry: Mastering the Digital Image by Barry Haynes, for a visual guide. For theory and tips, Realworld Photoshop 6 (from the same Peachpit press as the VQS series), isn't a bad book. Or for beginners, try Robert Stanley's idiot book. Anything but this book.
Rating:
Summary: Good for explorers - bad reviews unwarranted
Review: I agree with the "Gypsybells" review below -- this is a good book. Photoshop is an EXTREMELY difficult and complex program to learn, and it's kind of impossible to learn it without exploring. For any one way you want something to look (say, add an outer glow to items on a layer), there are umpteen million ways you could go about doing it. That's what makes Photoshop such a diverse and awesomely powerful application. Using Photoshop successfully requires knowing in the first place how you want your project to look -- i.e. you have to start out with some sense of visual design. This book is NOT a text about graphic design or aesthetics. I think that's what's frustrating to so many reviewers below who don't have a graphic design background. The book won't give you ideas about how to design something. It WILL show you how to do some basic neat stuff with Photoshop's functions. You'll come out of the book with a sense of accomplishment, because you'll know how to do a few neat things, and the BASIC tools to which this book introduces you will encourage you to explore further. Which is really what you have to do. There's just no other way. It is the nature of graphic design programs -- you have to try things out, because each project will be entirely different. I enjoy the Visual Quickstart series because it includes a lot of screen shots of how things should look, and they are usually straightforward in their wording. They don't have a lot of "side" material (commentary, "fluff"), so you can barrel right through the book and get down to business. This should not be your only Photoshop book, because it doesn't go into deep detail about Photoshop's functions. But it's definitely a valuable resource if you're just starting Photoshop and want to know what the heck this program is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Good for explorers - bad reviews unwarranted
Review: I agree with the "Gypsybells" review below -- this is a good book. Photoshop is an EXTREMELY difficult and complex program to learn, and it's kind of impossible to learn it without exploring. For any one way you want something to look (say, add an outer glow to items on a layer), there are umpteen million ways you could go about doing it. That's what makes Photoshop such a diverse and awesomely powerful application. Using Photoshop successfully requires knowing in the first place how you want your project to look -- i.e. you have to start out with some sense of visual design. This book is NOT a text about graphic design or aesthetics. I think that's what's frustrating to so many reviewers below who don't have a graphic design background. The book won't give you ideas about how to design something. It WILL show you how to do some basic neat stuff with Photoshop's functions. You'll come out of the book with a sense of accomplishment, because you'll know how to do a few neat things, and the BASIC tools to which this book introduces you will encourage you to explore further. Which is really what you have to do. There's just no other way. It is the nature of graphic design programs -- you have to try things out, because each project will be entirely different. I enjoy the Visual Quickstart series because it includes a lot of screen shots of how things should look, and they are usually straightforward in their wording. They don't have a lot of "side" material (commentary, "fluff"), so you can barrel right through the book and get down to business. This should not be your only Photoshop book, because it doesn't go into deep detail about Photoshop's functions. But it's definitely a valuable resource if you're just starting Photoshop and want to know what the heck this program is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent way to learn Phtotshop Basics
Review: I have been studying web design for the past year, and have utilized various books and resources during my training. I have found all of the visual quickstart guides to be far superior to any other means for gaining a thorough understanding of programs capabilities. Readers will benefit from an incredibly rapid pace of understanding the utilization of their software. In addition, these manuals are priced as an incredible value in contrast to other teaching aids.
Rating:
Summary: NOT !! for beginners
Review: I just got this book and have been trying to read for the last few days. It's dry as toast, and goes into very little detail on how things are done. It will start a new subject and not even gin an explanation as to what it is. Magic wand;, just tell you how to use it, not what it's used for, no examples of what an image looks like before you use it, with another one after so one can see the difference. This is the first review I wrote, but I just had to get the word out. If you're a beginner you need something else, so my quest goes on.
Rating:
Summary: NOT !! for beginners
Review: I just got this book and have been trying to read for the last few days. It's dry as toast, and goes into very little detail on how things are done. It will start a new subject and not even gin an explanation as to what it is. Magic wand;, just tell you how to use it, not what it's used for, no examples of what an image looks like before you use it, with another one after so one can see the difference. This is the first review I wrote, but I just had to get the word out. If you're a beginner you need something else, so my quest goes on.
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