The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)

EAN:9780321565952 Label:New Riders Press Author:Scott Kelby Binding:Paperback

Scott Kelby is my favorite photography author. Best Book on Elements I've Seen . His co-author, Matt Kloskowski, is also a very talented Photoshop professional2009-03-17 Rating 5. Boy, they really know how to write a clear, concise Photoshop Elements user manual for people that are new to the photo software-editing world. I hesitated for my first year with a camera in purchasing any type of editing software due to the fact that it was very intimidating. I'm not an expert with a PC or a camera and thought that the editing tricks and processes would be difficult and confusing. No more. Just skimming through this book answered a lot of questions I had and given me ideas on how to improve my existing photos. Color accent, cloning/erasing objects, layers, shadow effects and a slew of other tips are included in no nonsense, easy to follow advice in this book. I love it. I will post some of my touch-up photos on this book web page as well as my camera's product page. I can't wait! Buy this book. You won't regret it. It will add layers and layers to your photography collection, pardon the pun! . Clearly, the authors of this book are experts in Photoshop Elements. Great book with one reservation. This book will teach you tricks and techniques you would probably never be able to learn on your own2009-03-16 Rating 4. In addition they give "cookbook" line by line instructions which even a complete novice can follow. For the most part, the book is organized in a task-oriented manner which is convenient when you have a specific modification you want to make to your photo, i. e. modify colors, restore old faded photos, merge pictures and a thousand other ways to improve your pictures. The authors obviously know their subject well and are enthusiastic about passing on this information. The task oriented approach does have some disadvantages though. The book does not have chapters meant simply to explain each button, tool, etc in the program, rather you learn about the tools as you use them for a specific task. This is ok, but makes the book difficult to just sit down and read cover to cover in order to learn how to use the program. Rather it works best when you look up a topic one by one when you have a specific task you want to try. This probably works well for most people, but if you buy the book planning on just reading it from start to finish you may be overwhelmed. It would have been nice to have a chapter or two introducing different tools and concepts. My biggest complaint is the way they handle the layers tool. The authors state that every other book on elements goes through the basics of using layers, so they are going to skip this. Instead, layers are used frequently to achieve many techniques, with step by step cookbook instructions. Since I have not read a previous book (other than a previous edition of this book which takes the same approach), I don't understand the layers toolbar and just copy their step by step instructions (which give amazing results!). Nevertheless, in my opinion, a chapter explaining layers would help me understand layers better-- then I might be able to perform these tasks by myself rather than just memorizing the steps. I can't comment on whether this book is a good update if you already own their immediate previous edition as I upgraded from a previous edition for Elements 3. The upgrade is clearly worth it to me as there is substantial new information compared with the version for Elements 3. In summary, this book has an amazing amount of information presented in a step by step fashion easy to reproduce at home. It will teach you both simple and complex techniques to do amazing things with your pictures. I give it 4 stars because it is short at times on explaining concepts, particularly layers, requiring me to keep the book open and follow each step rather than being able to leave the book behind and apply the concepts I learned. . This book breaks new ground by doing something for digital photographers that’s never been done before—it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it. ” It’s not a bunch of theory; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure things out on your own. Instead, it does something that virtually no other Elements book has ever done—it tells you flat-out which settings to use, when to use them, and why