Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography (book with CD) [Paperback]

Philip Andrews (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 24, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0240520998 | ISBN-13: 978-0240520995

If you are an amateur or professional photographer who works with digital images and wants great results fast, this essential, easy-to-follow guide from world-renowned Adobe Photoshop Elements expert Philip Andrews is for you!

There are countless ways to use Adobe's powerful Elements 6 software, and Andrews helps you with the skills to conquer them all; from turning ordinary photos into extraordinary scrapbooks, calendars, and albums to making business cards, flyers, and other promotional materials for your organization quickly and economically. Real-life examples and precise, easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions will help you get up to speed with Elements 6 fast for the results you want in no time, whether your photographs are from your digital camera or scanned images from film and slides.

If it's in Elements, it's in this book. Andrews covers tried and true tools which have been revamped to better suit photographers' needs, such as the Adjust Color Curves and Convert to Black and White features, the Brightness/Contrast feature, and a smoother workflow for the creation of photo projects such as Photo Books, Photo Collage, Online Galleries, CD/DVD Jackets, and CD/DVD Labels. He also dives into the exciting, all-new features of Elements 6 such as:

*The Quick Selection Tool
*Fantastic Photomerge technology for group shots and faces, which lets you combine the best pieces from multiple images
*Direct copy to CD/DVD to speed up your workflow when you need to copy several images to disc quickly
*The Guided Edit Workshop with interactive technique tutorials
*Smart Albums, to automatically add photos that match certain criteria to your Album
*The Refine Edge feature, which allows you to control how smooth or feathered the edges of your images appear
*A Task Pane with five different Task Modes (Organize, Fix, Create, Share and Edit) to help you manage the processing of your images

.and much, much more.

Whatever your organizing, editing, creating, and sharing needs are, you'll find clear-cut, no-nonsense answers in this introductory book/CD/website learning package. If you find yourself getting stuck, Philip is just a click away with over two hours of superb video tutorials on the included CD. Or, visit the book's website, www.guide2elements.com, for updates and more images that you can use to practice your new skills.

Written by a photographer for photographers, this book is for those who want to know the techniques that get results and can be put into practice immediately.

*Best-selling author and world-renowned Elements expert Philip Andrews guides you through the latest and greatest features in this incredible software with easy-to-follow, precise step-by-step instructions
*Think again before you hit that delete button - beautiful, full color images show you how to rework ordinary shots into extraordinary pieces of art
*Begin practicing your new skills immediately with over TWO HOURS of superb video tutorials included on the CD

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for previous editions of this title:

"With Philip providing you with such a good street index to our Photoshop Elements 3.0 software you will be creating fantastic digital images in next to no time at all."
Judith Salonga, Adobe Systems

"If you need to manipulate digital images this is the book that will not only show you what can be achieved but inspire you to develop your skills even further."
Computer Arts Special

"Whether you are into manipulating photographs, wishing to build better websites or produce better looking prints, this book will help you to master all the necessary tools contained in the program. The learning curve just got shallower!"
Martin Evening

"Philip Andrews' knowledge and enthusiasm shines through."
Royal Photographic Society Journal


"If you need to manipulate digital images this is the book that will not only show you what can be achieved but inspire you to develop your skills even further."
Computer Arts Special

"Whether you are into manipulating photographs, wishing to build better websites or produce better looking prints, this book will help you to master all the necessary tools contained in the program. The learning curve just got shallower!"
Martin Evening

"Philip Andrews' knowledge and enthusiasm shines through."
Royal Photographic Society Journal

About the Author

Philip Andrews is Adobe Australia's official Photoshop and Elements Ambassador. He is an experienced photographer, author, magazine editor and online course creator. He was previously a lecturer at the Queensland School of Printing and Graphic Arts, Australia and Nescot, England. He is a beta tester for Photoshop, an alpha tester for Photoshop Elements and a Photoshop specialist demonstrator for Adobe Australia. Contributing numerous articles and videos to AdobeTV and the inspirational browser, Philip is a leading source in adobe information and instruction. Philip is also co-founder of photo-college.com an online photography training college. He's a regular contributor to several magazines including Shutterbug, Amateur Photographer, Australian Photography and Better Photography, he is senior contributing editor for Better Digital, columnist for What Digital Camera and Co-editor and publisher of Better Photoshop Techniques magazine.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press (December 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240520998
• ISBN-13: 978-0240520995
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #994,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Computers & Technology > Digital Photography & Video > Beginning Guides
  • #39 in Books > Computers & Technology > Digital Photography & Video > Adobe Photoshop Elements

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Takes the mystery and trial and error out of Elements 6., February 10, 2008

By 

Checkme (Land of 10,000 Lakes) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography (book with CD) (Paperback)

After buying Elements 6 and finding it hard to understand (and the Help menu of little help)for a novice like me I purchased the book by Mark Galer titled Elements 6 Maximum Performance. I found the book too difficult to follow and understand although the included DVD was helpful. I then purchased "Visual Introduction ... and found it to be just what I needed to help me put new life into my digital photographs. The included CD whas somewhat disappointing but nonetheless helpful and that is the reason for 4 stars instead of 5.

The book takes you from downloading your photo's, organizing them in the Organizer, fixing and editing your photos including underexposure and overexposure. Color correction and changing, cropping, all either automatically or fully manual. Using layers and the tool box. Creating albums and scrapbooks, and fun things like photomerge and stiching, slideshows with music, etc., etc.

Excellent step-by-step instruction that is easy to read and understand will take the mystery out of the Elements 6 program. So if you are new to the Elements software like me, a novice like me, and want to know all the in's and out's of Elements 6 like me, then buy this book - like me.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, but somewhat disappointing, February 26, 2008

By 

Gordon Padwick (Gig Harbor, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography (book with CD) (Paperback)

With reservations, I encourage you to get this book if you want to start learning how to use Photoshop Elements 6. The book provides a somewhat different perspective from the information available from the Help file and from Adobe's web site. Don't expect this book to provide the information you need to become a Photoshop Elements expert. Explore the Adobe web site to get that information.
The information in this book could, I think, have been more effectively presented if it had been subject to much better editing.
Unfortunately the book suffers from several problems. I find the author's writing style somewhat irritating. Sometimes he uses many words to say almost nothing. At other times, the author summarizes important matters that deserve detailed explanation in just a few words--I get the impression he couldn't be bothered to write adequate information.
The book omits information about some of Photoshop Element's useful capabilities.
The index is close to a disaster, probably because the index was created by a professional indexer on the publisher's staff who had little or no knowledge of photography.
The overall organization of the book could be much improved. There's a somewhat brief description of the Organizer in Chapter 3, with no reference (as far as I noticed) to much more information in Chapter 14.
The Jargon Buster section at the back of the book is totally inadequate; it minimally defines only a very few of the terms users need to understand.
Nevertheless, if you take the time to read through the book, you'll pick up a lot of useful tips about using Photoshop Elements.

Gordon Padwick

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good introduction to the latest version of Elements, March 5, 2008

By 

Mr. N. K. Turley "enkaytee" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography (book with CD) (Paperback)

As the subtitle says, this is an introduction to Adobes' `junior' image editing application.

The book itself is well laid out, with sections ranging from introductions to digital photography and Elements itself to printing, file management and some simple projects.

It's a good book for dipping into - the sections are easy to navigate with a clear contents page and index to help you find your way around.

The graphics used throughout the book are clear and well laid out and illustrate the tools and techniques being described in the text. Screenshots are good and a reasonable size so you can see all the components of a tool or menu.

At the moment, it only covers the Windows version - there's no indication of what will happen when the Macintosh version is released later this month.
- All the keyboard shortcuts are for Windows, and the `Organizer' workspace is fairly extensively covered - the Mac version will use `Bridge' as featured in CS3, so a relatively major rewrite would be required.

However, for users of the previous Windows based Elements version, mention is made where appropriate to equivalent commands in v.5 along with indicators where a particular tool or technique is new to v.6. It should be just possible to apply some of the techniques to older versions of Elements, but I wouldn't recommend buying this book unless you already own or are intending to upgrade to Elements 6.

A CD is supplied with the book which has a number of video tutorials covering the new and updated features in v.6 and some of the projects featured in later sections in the book, along with resources for practising the more complex work-throughs - within the text, an indicator is used to show that content is available on the CD.

The author also has a web site including video podcasts, tutorials, and loads of additional resources, some for previous Elements versions.

I found this to be a very informative book with plenty of material for the new Elements user and a good all round introduction to digital imaging.