Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 for Photographers, First Edition

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A simply superb book for learning how to use Photoshop 7.0 with images from your digital camera or scanner. I've been using Photoshop since before Adobe purchased it from the Knoll brothers and would assert that this book ranks among the two or three best works ever published on Photoshop, even when compared with Adobe's own excellent Classroom-in-a-Book series.

The book is designed to address the issues that pro photographers face in reproducing and manipulating digital imagery with Photoshop 7.0, but contains a wealth of info and shortcuts that are valuable to anyone using Photoshop with the current generation of digital cameras and scanners. The author also is to be commended for the clarity of his writing, and his ability to explain the more complex concepts of digital manipulation of imagery.

I especially like the inclusion of examples generated by pro photographers using professional models, instead of the poorly lit examples that fill most books covering the use of Photoshop. The CD tutorials included with the book are excellent, as well. The information on color space and calibration in the book can be a bit daunting for new users, but they are well worth the effort to read. The example projects included in the book are very useful and cover nearly all the practical situations that most photographers might face in their work with Photoshop.

The actual book is beautifully printed on fine quality paper and the example photos are reproduced quite nicely by the folks at Focal Press. I would love a bit more on using third-party plug-ins in the next edition, but that is a minor criticism of this wonderful volume. This book represents the current state-of-the-art for improving your work with Adobe's flagship application.

While most certainly geared towards pros, the book is great for those users who aspire to those heights. Even though I've worked with digital imagery for almost twenty years, I still learned an amazing amount from this book, and consider it to be a bargain. Very highly recommended.

I've used Photoshop for several years and never felt that I knew how to get the best results as a photographer. What I saw with my eye, captured either on film or digital, worked with in Photoshop and then sent to the printer, never was exactly what I wanted. After the first six chapters, I was finally getting a handle on what I'd been puzzled by for years. By the end of the book, I had learned more than my money's worth!

If you need to learn Photoshop, get the "Classroom" book. If you want your photos to literally come alive in Photoshop and have that translated to your prints, get this book. You'll also pick up all of those handy keyboard shortcuts that make the process fly.

The book is physically a little heavy for bedtime reading, but that's a good excuse to go back to the computer and play with the new ideas and solutions, even at 3 AM.

Enjoy.

Im a novice with photoshop but this book is a "keeper". Ive purchased and quickly sold most of the "How to" books on photoshop. Some had too little information, some had too much information, and some were loaded with confusing information . This book has a great balance of "how to" and "why" for all levels of photoshop users. I like it.

It's the best book I've found so far dealing with the unwieldly subject of PhotoShop. He covers a lot of bases and demystifies topics like alpha channels; subjects that never seem to be quite clearly explained in the other books. My only complaint is that some of the instructions seem a little vague in one or two of the examples. That said, I emailed Martin directly for clarification and he replied with an answer within 12 hours.

I think that it would be very useful for non-photographers as well.

I've been a professional photographer and graphic designer
for 14 years and I've used photoshop since its early days.
(before Layers)
This is an awesome reference book! This book covers a wide range of topics. Mr. Evening is very knowledgable
on digital imagery, manipulation, and overall use of modern digital imaging devices. I would say this is the very best book I've ever come across. Photoshop is so
versatile that the complexity can be overwhelming
But this book explains it all very well.

This is a very good book for any photographer who is interested in digital photography. Many photographers are now switching to digital with even hardened film users scanning in slides for archiving, re-touching or just being creative.

The book focuses on photoshop from a photographers point of view rather than from a graphic designers. There are many tips for beginners and advanced users alike.
Highly recommended for all photographers wanting to learn photoshop

I purchased "Adobe Photoshop 7 for Photographers" specifically for instructions on improving my photography processing skills. I have experience developing film and paper-based photos, providing me with comprehension of photo lab techniques as well as the associated dark-room lingo. Combining this background with an intermediate-level understanding of Photoshop, I was quite keen on diving into this book.

While most of the content I found to be very useful, in many instances the editing was so poor that the book suddenly resembled a cloak-and-dagger mystery. Quality of instruction, it would appear, is sacrificed for speed of publication (admittedly, not uncommon in application books these days). If one combines the print instructions with the enclosed CD, the "Aha!" moment comes across much more easily; however, there just aren't enough of these print/CD combinations available for the reader's enjoyment. It's a real missed opportunity. What's more, (I have no idea if this is true or false) it appears that the publisher of the book and the publisher of the CD might be from two completely different companies; no doubt separated by the Atlantic Ocean. I must agree with a previous comment on the CD content: The narration speeds along at lightning pace, often ahead of the visuals, while the poor cursor has difficulty just keeping up (even on a fast G4 with all content saved on hard drive). It's nearly impossible to follow the narrator's cursor, unless one knows Photoshop well enough to listen for audio clues.

Still, there's a lot to be had between the covers, and it's worth scrumming through the content despite the bruising editorial.

No, this book isn't quite for beginners - I wouldn't use it as a photoshop primer. However, I am also not a professional photographer or photoshopper - and I have gotten so much from this book.

Within 5 minutes of picking up this book I had taken a color digital photograph and made it look like it was shot on black and white infrared film.

It took me a similar amount of time to make color images look like I had used an alternative process to develop the film.

The steps for just about anything you'd want to do creatively are short, easy to follow, and are accompanied by excellent demonstration photos. The book is in full color, which is extremely important given the subject matter.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to take digital photographs and do artistic and wonderful things with them.

This is not a large book for the price, but the production values are excellent. All illustrations are in color and at high resolution, so you can actually see even the most subtle effects of image manipulation.

This is not a beginner's book, and it is not for those who wish to use Photoshop principally for painting or drawing. Rather, it is just what the title says--"for photographers." If you already know the basics of Photoshop and the elements of photography, I think you will find this is the most valuable Photoshop book in print today.

The book is divided into short (2 to 4-page) sections, each dealing with a common photographic problem (too dark, too much highlight, eyebrows too thin, waist too thick, facial blemishes and wrinkles, red eye, yellow teeth, color casts--you name it) and step-by-step remedies for each, including specific numerical values to plug into dialog boxes for filters. The book is useful for all sorts of photography, but I have found it most useful for pictures of people. The author apparently has extensive experience in fashion photography; his techniques are especially strong in the area of making people look better than in real life without producing any perception of artificiality.

1. I have bought / read around 5-6 photoshop books.
2. I've been a photographer for 20 years, have a lot of traditional darkroom experience, but have been into digital photography for around... 2 yrs.
3. Bottomline:
a. This book is somewhat difficult to read (not as clear as it can / should be).
b. There is way too little practical detail. There's a lot of fluff, but little substance.
c. The attached CD-ROM is a joke. Not really helpful.
d. I would recommend others to at least consider: blazer / blatner's book (real world photoshop), photoshop artistry, john camp's book (don't know how to spell his last name).