Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques [Paperback]

Ben Willmore (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321213521 | ISBN-13: 978-0321213525 | Publication Date: February 21, 2004

If you're ready to go from Photoshop competent to Photoshop enlightened, this is the place to turn. In these pages, revered Photoshop instructor Ben Willmore explains the whys behind the how's so that you can unleash Photoshop CS' full creative potential. In a friendly, easy-going style that's long on information and short on techno-babble, Ben explains the concepts, features, and techniques that promise to make a real difference in the way you use Photoshop CS. Complex concepts like curves and channels are made crystal clear, and features new to Photoshop CS--like the very cool PhotoMerge function for creating panoramic composite images, support for nested layers, and more--are covered in the depth they deserve. After a quick grounding in the tools, palettes, layers, and masks at the program's core, Ben gets into the real-world production techniques that make up the heart of this volume: sharpening scans, correcting and optimizing images, and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ben Willmore is the founder of Digital Mastery, a Boulder, Colorado-based training and consulting firm that specializes in Photoshop. Ben has always been known to be a little nutty about all things technical, even as a child. Not long after he traded in his tricycle for training wheels, he started building cameras out of do-it-yourself kits. In 1981, at the tender age of 14, he made his official debut into computer nerd-dom when he attended CompuCamp. That's where he discovered his first two loves, computers and graphic design, and where he learned how to use a graphics tablet to produce art on an Apple computer-three full years before the Macintosh said its first, "Hello."

Not surprisingly, he went on to become a graphic designer. In those days that meant knowing all about such primitive things as typesetting, keylining, and stat cameras. When the first tools of electronic publishing started showing up, Ben began his trend as an aggressive early adopter of new technologies. While most people in the business were holding back in a wait-and-see attitude, Ben was charging ahead and embracing the new tools like long-lost friends. His first serious push into the new arena was when he helped convert his college's daily newspaper from traditional techniques to electronic tools in the late 1980s.

Ben became known as someone who likes to push his tools to the limit, causing many printing companies and service bureaus to ask "How'd you do that?" His obsession with the nuts and bolts of electronic publishing turned him into an unwitting one-man customer support center for all his friends and coworkers. It was this, he discovered, that was his third love-helping others truly understand graphics software. And so he decided to go out on his own and teach his favorite program (Photoshop) full time.

In 1994 he created what has become the hugely successful seminar, Photoshop Mastery. Since then he has taught over 30,000 Photoshop users, and travels around the world presenting his seminars and speaking at publishing events such as Photoshop World. He writes a monthly column for Photoshop User Magazine. Ben can be reached at [e-mail].

Mark Clarkson-self-described writer, artist, and dilettante-was a great help in reviewing and adding selected Photoshop CS updates and screenshots to five chapters of this edition of Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques. Mark lives in Kansas. He is the author of Photoshop Secrets of the Pros, The Photoshop Tennis Book, BattleBots: The Official Guide, Flash 5 Cartooning, The Guide to Cartooning with Macromedia Flash, and Windows Hothouse. As Mark puts it, "I'm a book author, magazine writer, 3D animator, and Flash cartoonist. Yes, it's sad, but at 42 I still haven't decided what I want to do when I grow up." There's more about Mark at http://www.markclarkson.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press (February 21, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321213521
• ISBN-13: 978-0321213525
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,016,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great even for novices and advanced users, July 18, 2004

By 

J. Martinez (Bronx, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques (Paperback)

Well, I bought this book because of the great reviews it had received, and I gotta say it deserves them. It's so good I read the first 240pp in about 3 days. The first chapter alone will show you how to streamline your workspace to get the most out of Photoshop. By the time you read through to chapter eight, you will have a very solid understanding of some tools that will allow you fix photographs you thought were messed up beyond repair.

Willmore's conversational style makes it easy to understand everything he's explaining, and the images (all in color, unless they're grayscales) clarify whatever confusions may arise. Just be sure to work along with him (using the images in the CD) so you get a feel of the tools he's teaching you how to use.

I have not yet gotten to the part where he teaches you specific "tricks," but I looked ahead and am very eager to get there. I find that highlighting certain parts of the text and rereading them before moving on to the next chapter helps me remember what I just read. This book will definitely turn any beginner/novice into an advanced Photoshopper.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good supplement to the User Guide BUT..., March 20, 2004

By 

Scott K. Brown "Mac Expert" (Columbus, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques (Paperback)

The author removed an important section from this, the CS edition, that was present in the previous books.
Specifically, Mr. Willmore didn't include the Web chapter. To his credit he does state this in the intro section, citing the number of improvements to ImageReady (the web graphic creation part of Photoshop) is huge and that the associated chapter would dominate the book. He also said that web designers are not forgotten, that the book is still very web-friendly, he just didn't include a specific chapter or section that covered the web tools.
Well, something must have happened between his writing of that and the actual printing of the book, because I can't find anything that deals with items such as animation, slices, GIF's, or even ImageReady itself. I do need to say that I haven't read the book cover to cover, and that just because there are no entries in the index for these items it doesn't mean they aren't discussed, somewhere, in the pages that I've not read (although if they are, then the book deserves another ding because the index is incomplete).
What is covered is done very well and very completely. Mr. Willmore knows his subject, and it shows in the thourough way he discusses the program. He provides great primers on channels, masks, color correction, scanning, curves, levels
layers, and other features. He takes the more complex tools and breaks them down in ways any user, no matter how much or little experience he or she may have, can understand and apply. Each chapter has a mini-glossary titled "Ben's Techno-Babble Decoder Ring", each entry further explaining terms introduced in the chapter in a no-nonsence manner.
I will say this is an indespenseable book to go along with with the too-thin User Guide. I'm just disappointed that readers of the previous editions must now purchase yet another book if they want to learn about the web graphic features.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of the best of Photoshop Books, June 13, 2004

By 

Michael J. Cresci "Mikeylikesit" (Petaluma, CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop CS Studio Techniques (Paperback)

No one could deny that really learning Photoshop is a bit of work. Now that I have my certificate I can tell you that for a fact.

Ben Willmore's book takes what appears to be the sometimes scary commands, tools and features of Photoshop and not only what they are - but when to use them. He explains them in a way that makes it appear simple, and then gives you an example.

The book is easy to follow and one of the textbooks books that should be read from front to back. And consantly used for a reference. I will not be selling this one on Amazon Mktplace!

For you dollar this book is a bargain. I used this book constantly though my last semester advanced photoshop class and it gets the most credit for getting me an A (398 out of 420 possible points) in my class.

I hope he writes an equally excellent book on Imageready.

I highly reccomend this book.