Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide

Rating:
Summary: Works for Me!
Review: Every buyer has different needs. Mine are simple. I'm a serious photographer,and mechanical stuff is not my best talent or skill area. For me, to work with Photoshop is fun and exciting because I can take my photography results to a new level. At the same time, it's totally terrifying. Busch's book is great for me because he includes the CD for me to work with, so I don't have to learn with my own photos. And he's committed to photography as the ultimate motivation, not just a love of computer gadgetry. The book's example photos are in color and on almost every page. They look like the type of photos I take, not something unachievable. And show what I can do with them. Busch's style is very motivating for non-techies, and building confidence is his best skill as an author. It's refreshing to see a computer or photography author admit that they don't always take perfect photos or do everything right with a computer program. In all his books, Busch is honest about his own experiences and that alone is a motivator for me. I learned a lot here and will use more of it as time goes by while I get more familiar with my Photoshop 7 software.

Rating:
Summary: Finally a Photoshop book from the photographer's viewpoint!
Review: Finally we have an understandable Photoshop book written from a serious photographer's viewpoint! This book shows you how to recreate (and surpass) many traditional photographic effects using Photoshop, and explains every topic, from retouching and combining pictures to color correction in terms any amateur photographer will understand. Too many Photoshop and even digital photography books these days are written by graphics workers or computer gurus who really don't understand photography. The books that do claim to cover both Photoshop and photography seem to be written for advanced professional photographers.

There were several things I really liked about this book. First it is in full color, with every page filled with gorgeous images. I also liked how the author provided several different ways to accomplish the same thing, such as using the Levels and Curves commands to adjust tone. The chapter introducing the Andromeda filters was especially good. I'd never heard of these filters before, and after using the versions on the book's CD-ROM, I found they are the only ones to accurately reproduce many traditional camera filter effects, such as diffraction gratings. Thank you, Mr. Bush for the eye-opener!

This is a perfect book for those who want to learn more about Photoshop while applying their knowledge of photography.

Rating:
Summary: Not the definitive Photographer's Guide for Photoshopers
Review: I am always searching for good books that cover the subject of digital photography and Photoshop. I thought this book was it, but it came up short. There were some good sections, even for the intermediate and expert level, but the majority of it is basic information. Few of the techniques were useful, but most of them were amateurish and not really used in professional photography. The makers of Andromeda filters must have sponsored this book in some fashion as there is a whole chapter dedicated to these filters. Again, most of these filters are not useful in real world applications. Overall I was disappointed in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Just what I needed! Photoshop and photography!
Review: I love this book! The two great loves of my life are Photoshop and photography (not necessarily in that order), and now I'm adding this book to my list. It's the first book on Photoshop that I've seen that doesn't insult the intelligence of photographers. The author really seems to know and understand our needs and viewpoints. The book showed me how to duplicate many of my favorite photographic effects in Photoshop.

I really liked the sections on retouching and compositing. I wished they were longer. Lots of my photos have...er...problems and I spend a lot of time in Photoshop trying to fix them. I found some interesting techniques for repairing pictures that were less than perfect, and a few really good ideas for combining several so-so photos into one really great picture.

The color is great. I'm getting tired of picking up Photoshop books and finding only an 8 or 16 page "gallery" section with a few color pictures. I want color on every page! It's a *color* image editor, isn't it? Thank you for this great book!

Rating:
Summary: This is my favorite Photoshop book!
Review: I must have purchased 20 different Photoshop books through the years, starting with Photoshop 5.5, but this one is my absolute favorite! I originally was attracted to it because it claimed to appeal to photographers. I was skeptical, but it sure enough was full of the kind of details that serious photographers look for when editing images. However, it turned out to be a darned good Photoshop book, too. I can recommend it highly.

It helps if you know something about photography and Photoshop before you begin, as this is not aimed at the absolute neophyte. But if you know how to use Photoshop's basic tools (or even just know where they are) and can find the shutter release button on your camera, this book will help you improve your skills in both image editing and photography.

The CD-ROM was a welcome addition for a change. This one included all the pictures in the book, plus the files the author used to produce his amazing effects. I worked through all the examples, but the techniques I learned gave me the push I needed to go out and shoot some photos of my own so I could play with them, too.

Rating:
Summary: This is my favorite Photoshop book!
Review: I must have purchased 20 different Photoshop books through the years, starting with Photoshop 5.5, but this one is my absolute favorite! I originally was attracted to it because it claimed to appeal to photographers. I was skeptical, but it sure enough was full of the kind of details that serious photographers look for when editing images. However, it turned out to be a darned good Photoshop book, too. I can recommend it highly.

It helps if you know something about photography and Photoshop before you begin, as this is not aimed at the absolute neophyte. But if you know how to use Photoshop's basic tools (or even just know where they are) and can find the shutter release button on your camera, this book will help you improve your skills in both image editing and photography.

The CD-ROM was a welcome addition for a change. This one included all the pictures in the book, plus the files the author used to produce his amazing effects. I worked through all the examples, but the techniques I learned gave me the push I needed to go out and shoot some photos of my own so I could play with them, too.

Rating:
Summary: More! More! More! Great book!
Review: I received this book ... and the only thing wrong with it is I can't get enough of these great ideas. I admit there are enough cool techniques in this book than you'd find in books that are twice as long. It's all meat, and full of stunning effects. I've managed to skim through it and try out five or six of the projects, and I just know that when I'm finished I'm going to be looking for more books like this one.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I still found the "photographer's viewpoint" angle fascinating. The author's description of both conventional photographic techniques and ways to get the same look with Photoshop made me want to go fire up my point-and-shoot camera, or maybe seriously consider that digital camera I've been looking at. After reading this book, I know I can do better.

The parts dealing with Photoshop are really good, too. I've always found Photoshop fairly confusing, but I guess I know enough to handle the step by step instructions in this book. At least, the photos I edited looked a lot better than when I started.

It will take me a few weeks (or months) to exhaust all the tricks I found in this book. By then, I'm hoping the author will have PHOTOSHOP 7 Photographers Guide PART TWO ready for me. Thanks!

Rating:
Summary: More! More! More! Great book!
Review: I received this book ... and the only thing wrong with it is I can't get enough of these great ideas. I admit there are enough cool techniques in this book than you'd find in books that are twice as long. It's all meat, and full of stunning effects. I've managed to skim through it and try out five or six of the projects, and I just know that when I'm finished I'm going to be looking for more books like this one.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I still found the "photographer's viewpoint" angle fascinating. The author's description of both conventional photographic techniques and ways to get the same look with Photoshop made me want to go fire up my point-and-shoot camera, or maybe seriously consider that digital camera I've been looking at. After reading this book, I know I can do better.

The parts dealing with Photoshop are really good, too. I've always found Photoshop fairly confusing, but I guess I know enough to handle the step by step instructions in this book. At least, the photos I edited looked a lot better than when I started.

It will take me a few weeks (or months) to exhaust all the tricks I found in this book. By then, I'm hoping the author will have PHOTOSHOP 7 Photographers Guide PART TWO ready for me. Thanks!

Rating:
Summary: A splendid and confidently recommended resource
Review: Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide by computer imaging expert David D. Busch is an superbly organized and presented guide to utilizing Photoshop 7 software for both film and digital photography. Packed from cover to cover with a wealth of invaluable tips, tricks, techniques; enhanced full-color photographs; samples of what the software can do; and a great deal more, Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide is a splendid and confidently recommended resource for crafting stunning and unique images, or simply touching up photographs as one desires. An included is an accompanying CD-ROM containing more than 300 color images and demo filters for Andromeda. If you use Photoshop 7, either personally or professionally, then you need your own copy of Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide!

Rating:
Summary: It's alright, but there's better books out there
Review: The book claims to be photoshop from a photographers point of view. Based on the books style, I believe it's intended for someone who knows photography well and is just moving to photoshop. It's definately not supposed to be an advanced photoshop book, but the problem I see with it, is that it's really NOT a great introduction book to photoshop either (even for a photographer). Some advanced concepts are dealt with too quickly, and some basics expanded more than nescessary, not to mention some bothersome bad habit techniques he instructs the reader to do. For example Levels are skipped in favour of brightness/contrast. I realize that he wanted to keep the book simple, but for photographers, the basics of Levels should be covered properly.

There is some useful and interesting information in the book, but a lot of the times it feels like the author is trying to achieve the proper word count for the chapter. There's also a cheesy advertisement chapter on a particular 3rd party plug-in set that the author "recommends". He claims they are quite useful to photographers, but they are obviously tasteless, and are all effects that could be achieved manually with a better knowledge of the base version of Photoshop.

I've always liked Adobe's Classroom in a book for learning the basics. And then if you want to pursue the photography angle, I'd recommend following that up with either 'Photoshop 7 Artistry' or 'Photoshop Master Class", both are fairly advanced but they teach how to make nice images.