Editorial Reviews:
Adobe Photoshop is the application of choice for digital image manipulation. However, its armada of palettes and tool bars can be intimidating to Photoshop newcomers. Photoshop X for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide gives users an accessible, how-to reference guide to basic photo editing, manipulation, optimization, and correction techniques, all referencing the latest release of Photoshop. Beginners don't need to wander through menus or read a great deal of text when using this guide. Extensive pictures and captions reassure them that they are in the correct dialog box, popup menu, or entry field as they do their work. Used as a standard textbook in countless classrooms and as a desktop reference by print and Web graphics professionals everywhere, this is a book that explains Photoshop techniques clearly and quickly.
The authors of Photoshop 6 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide have many years' experience in writing--and it shows. This latest volume is one of the longest QuickStart Guides (as befits such a complex application), with each page chock-full of screen shots of images, palettes, toolbars, and option panels. Photoshop's work environment has changed significantly since version 5.5; for example, a new options bar has been added. Right off, this guide maps out the landscape with callouts and captions that define each and every item you might see when Photoshop is running. A "6.0!" icon marks every new item. The strength of all QuickStart Guides is their abundance of black-and-white screen shots laid out in one column on the page, coupled with the step-by-step instructions and concise explanations that appear on the adjacent column. These are not tutorials that simulate a classroom experience by taking one project through many stages (although sample images are shown). Rather, this book is more like a fix-it manual--you have a problem in your own work, you look up the appropriate keywords in the index, and then you apply the steps to work out a solution. As would be expected, the book takes you through all the many parts of Photoshop, from pixel basics like resolution to selections, layers, history, masks, paths, type, filters, actions, and preparing images for print or Web. Also covered is using ImageReady to optimize images for the Web and make slices, rollovers, and animations. Features that are new to ImageReady 3.0 are also highlighted with a "6.0!" icon, making it easy to find just those topics that will be of interest to readers already comfortable in version 5.5. There's also a lengthy list of keyboard shortcuts for both platforms, followed by an impressively detailed index. --Angelynn Grant
Customer Reviews:
Displaying 1 to 5 of 17 total reviews (Page 1 of 4):
 "You'll be up & running in no-time" (seriously)
Very good resource for learning the ins-&-outs of Photoshop. Nothing in the book was a "serious waste of time", which I find in a lot of books. You'll pick-up a great deal, but still there's even more to learn. Displacement maps & all those other tidbits are left out, but thats why Colin Smith, Kelby, Monroe, & other gurus, come out with the books they do. As for those other reviewers who says its not for beginners, thats nonsense. If you not sitting in front of Photoshop practicing then perhaps the newly aqquainted will get lost. One last note, Photoshop 7 is out now, I've toyed with it and used it, and this book for 6 is still just as good. In 7, theres a filebrowser, a cool new brush engine, and some [crummy]new tools in the toolbox that you'll never use. :)  NOT !! for beginners
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.  Book Level: Intermediate!
It is the first Photoshop book that I bought. It confused me a lot. There is no learning guide in this book. After I read a true beginner level book, I found it quite useful as a "How-To" book. Book Level: Intermediate!
It is the first Photoshop book that I bought. It confused me a lot. There is no learning guide in this book. After I read a true beginner level book, I found it quite useful as a "How-To" book. Not For Beginners; Black&White, Crowded Format a Problem Too
So far this is the Photoshop book I'd tell you to buy last after my buying 5 different ones. It is the one in use in my college level course and I think they should use just about anything else. Its biggest problem is that it is just too complicated for a beginner to use. It throws an enormous amount of material before you.(That is the effect it has upon you as a student--data being dumped on you en masse) Hours later into reading it, you are no better off than when you started. It is also in black and white and every single page is jam packed with material. This off-putting visual style/format is no aid to learning either. Now that I'm steadily improving in Photoshop, I hope I am able to occasionally open this book and learn something I haven't gleaned elsewhere so as to get my [money] out of it. I have yet to be able to do this though. I can't really recommend buying this book and I think colleges should stop requiring it as the text. More Customer Reviews:
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(17 reviews)
