Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop 6 Digital Darkroom

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

MyMac.com BOOK BYTES review by John Nemerovski

Regular readers of MyMac.com will remember Lisa Lee for reviews of her award-winning books, plus a Nemo Memo interview. She's back with an unusual book published by Prima Tech. Book Bytes welcomes this new publisher, with encouragement for their future titles.

Why does a $600 application require a $50 third party book? Don't you think the software developer of a world-class product would hire the best authors on the planet to develop printed manuals and online help guides? What's wrong with this picture?

I can never get enough illustrated tutorials. Book Bytes will continue to review them as often as we can. Most of these graphics-heavy texts come from two or three of the major computer book publishers. Adobe Photoshop 6 Digital Darkroom breaks new ground, and sets a high standard.

FACTS: This book is big, heavy, expensive, and worth the effort. Author Lisa Lee itemizes the crucial steps in making Photoshop 6 the premier creative working tool for the next generation of talented digital photographers. Her lessons are informative and well-illustrated, and the book is designed, not merely assembled.

Four major parts contain 19 chapters, assisting readers on "Taking Pictures," and learning how to manipulate them in Photoshop, through "Creating Complex Images" and publishing the results on the Internet. Lisa knows both photography and Photoshop, and incorporates them together seamlessly.

The oversized pages contain instructional material, brilliant color images, detailed steps, and hundreds of helpful hints. If you utilize only a few of the author's lessons, Adobe Photoshop 6 Digital Darkroom will pay for itself.

My favorite aspect of this book is Lisa's consistency. Her writing and visual styles are no-nonsense casual. She includes an ongoing visual conversation with readers, featuring a few versatile generic images given very different treatment as the book progresses. Here we have a book that is a delight to study and full of wisdom.

An invasion of Photoshop 6 titles from every computer book publisher is about to commence. Hey! Two more just arrived. You can't own every one, so give Adobe Photoshop 6 Digital Darkroom serious consideration.

Mac Mice Rating: 4 out of 5

Lisa Lee writes in a down-to-the-point-way. The book is en excellent INTRODUCTION to the digital darkroom. However: this is no specific introduction to using Photoshop 6, as one might believe.
I've not yet had the time to dig reeeally deep into this book, but a few hours of looking through it tells me that the experienced (I'm an ACE in Photoshop) user might feel that this book doesn't contain what one might expect.
Lisa Lee writes about different cameras, going deeper under the surface at one of them. I think that is a good idea, because most of the digital cameras have many options in common.
She also tips the reader on HOW to take pictures, in the short-and-to-the-point-way one needs. (Time is not what we have most of, is it?) I do recommend this book - especially for beginners to intermediate users :)

I like the layout and great color. Pages lay flat on the desk. Good crisp text on quality paper; and rich in-depth content presented on bigger than usual pages. I'm a photoshop novice, and this book satisfies my craving for help with understanding and using some advanced features. Screen snapshots (in color) illustrate effects of features being discussed.

Book has a nice table of contents -- four parts (19 chapters): Working with Digital Pictures, Photoshop 6 Basics, Creating Complex Images, and Publishing Pictures. There is also an adequate glossary, and rather complete index. (good for reference)

The introduction states: ... designed for the casual or amateur photographer with an intermediate to advanced level of computer and graphics application experience; there is no coverage of the history brush, color theory, pre-press, or printing...

This book suits me well. Most chapters are useful, and the examples are great. I love the presentation (layout).

This book was well done with very useful imagies on digital imagining editing! Any photoshop user will find it very helpful! It lacks on imagies from the digital camerea but you can't put it all in one book : ) A great assest to all Photoshop users! A must have for sure...

Finding my way around Photoshop and Image Ready has always been a challenge. I'm not a beginner or an expert, more like a Photoshop book collector. I really liked the way the content is presented in this book.

I found a lot of very good information and great tips in this book but unfortunately I thought many of the example images were quite bland or mediocre. Unlike some other PS6 books with vivid images that made me want to learn a technique - many of these images left me wondering "why would you even want to do that?"

Not very useful. Expected a lot more specific details of how to improve images taken with a digital camera. Author's explanations are not clear. The author/publisher paid more attention to style than to content. Very, very dispointed. Felt it was a waste of money.

This book is full of fluff with very few details on how to do things. It is like a detailed brochure for Photoshop rather then an instructional book. It tells you what Photoshop is capable of and what menu to press but then leaves you hanging on how to use the tool. There is not a lot of detail on the tools only that they exist.

I got rid of my copy almost immediately. The photos used to "illustrate" a technique are not very good. Even though the book is printed beautifully and (I think) in color, the photo selection is so poor as to make the book less than useful. It was so bad, I couldn't even get into trying to read the text.

Having used Photoshop casually since version 2.5 (circa 1993) and upgrading it every few years in a kneejerk sort of way, I recently decided to delve deeper. Never got around to learning 'advanced' stuff like masking, dodging and burning outside the non-digital darkroom. Blurbs and reviews made this book seem justabout the right choice.
Let me say this up front: the book is exceedingly well-presented. Top quality paper, great page lay-out, clear print (not counting the densely-spaced ALL CAPS chapter intros, but hey, they look great provided you don't try to READ 'em).
Lisa Lee writes pleasantly enough, but when it comes to step-by-step procedures the reader is often left dangling slowly in the breeze. Makes me wonder whether these 'recipes' were actually tried out 'in the kitchen' by someone from the target audience.
Another problem is confusion: sub-headings promise a logical progression (e.g. Chapter 9 on Masks) , but the actual text does not seem to follow this outline very closely, often jumping hither and yon. Also, some of the Tips suffer from obscurity and ramblingness IMO, like this one on page 111:
" If an image looks more or less the same across all channels, you might want to create a copy of the image in its own layer and adjust the levels so that the edges of the area you want to edit stand out a little more. Then pick a channel you want to use to create the mask". Is it just me?
I'll be steadily working my way through the rest of the book, gleaning whatever gems there are to be found in the maze (in all fairness, found several already). But I keep Carla Rose's far less eye-candy-rich (b&w) SAMS book on hand to fill in the gaps, even if my copy is two Photoshop versions out of date.
Bottom line: this book could have done with a ruthless editor and some major rewrites for clarity and logic.