Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
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I have been a Photoshop Elements user since Version 2. While my artistic photography is strictly film-based (I am a large-format B&W specialist), I have used Photoshop Elements for many years when scanning and preparing my images for my web site [...] and other marketing and publicity activities. Over the past several years, Photoshop Elements has grown considerably in its power, and now contains many of the features traditionally reserved for the professional version of Photoshop. Philip Andrews' new book, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7, walked me through all of the new features in a clear and concise way, and is organized so that I can easily select specific subjects without sequentially reading all of the material before. This makes the book ideally suited for someone like me who has some basic knowledge, but needs to come up to speed on the new Elements features. However, the book also contains all of the step-by-step information for someone who is new to digital photography, organized in such a way that they can read as much or as little as they need, depending upon their existing knowledge. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to both the beginner and advanced amateur.

If you have Photoshop Elements 7 you owe it to yourself to get a cookbook like this one. I call them cookbooks because they go through all the steps to get the desired outcome with your photos. Although PE7 has better instructions included then previous versions, its nice to not have to go back and forth between the help section and your photo. This book is geared toward the beginner but includes more advanced techniques too. If you are just using PE7 in the autofix mode check out this book and unleash all the tools that are easy to use once you know they are there and how to get to them. Excellent book, highly recommend to anyone with PE7.

Any studying Photoshop Elements 7 will find this a fine introductory survey packed with tutorials for every step of Elements. From hundreds of images designed to show the specific results of every Elements 7 command to creating scrapbooks, albums, and making easy image changes, Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography is a 'must' for any serious photography or Photoshop collection.

I have been using Adobe photoshop software since Element 2. Most of the time, I just used the basic features only (like cropping, auto level adjust, auto contract adjust...etc). I have tried to pick up some books to learn more about Adobe photoshop elements software. But most of the books are either too technical details, or too much descriptions (and less photos) that are difficult (or boring) to follow through.

But this book, "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: Visual Introduction to Digital Photography" uses a quite different approach. It contains all of the step-by-step instructions to use each feature of the Elements software. A large collection of images are provided along the step-by-step instructions. I specially like that images are displayed side-by-side to show the difference of photo processing by the software. This really helps the readers appreciate the function of each operation, and help the reader understand what the expected results would be.

In summary, this book does a great job in presenting the Adobe Photoshop Elements in a visual way that is easier for people to follow. There are plenty of photo books for more advanced skills. But for beginners, this is an excellent book to start with.

I have the Missing Manual for this program and find that Phillip Andrews did a much nicer job in this book. I like the way he illustrated each process and gave the entire path for each menu item. He also starts with a great explanation of the digital process. Very well written. His downloads are very good as well.

A high quality reference for beginners and intermediate user.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography By: Philip Andrews

I held off writing this review until I had a chance to read the entire book. Now that I did here are the comments I have.
You get what you pay for. The sheer quality of the cover and the paper for the pages is immediately apparent. The content matches the outside, so yes this book you can judge by the cover.
This book does not treat the user like a dummy or an idiot, it does not talk down to you.
It is not a rehash of the user manual or the help files. There is truly added content here. There is also a link to a webpage where you can see videos of the topics covered. You CAN use it in place of the manual also
There is an excellent comparison table of all the Photoshop and Photoshop Elements software versions. How to achieve similar results with various editions is very useful.
It is not only for beginners, intermediate users will benefit as well. For most of the settable adjustments the author has a suggested value. There are things like "10 commandments for filter usage" which offer tips that I had to learn the hard way. There are also "pro tips", but they were only intermediate in level. If you have more than 20 hours with Photoshop, you would have known them already.

Layers and layer blending is explain by illustrating what various modes do on a sample image. However this book is not really any better at explaining why to use the layers or various blending modes in the first place. I always feel like I am missing something here by being able to do all I need with the main layer and using history step back if I mess up something.
Of course there are the typical post your images on the web, and printing chapters, but they were too basic.
One of the last chapters is several photo projects which explain from beginning to end how a certain enhanced photo was put together. I wish this chapter was longer.

So all in all, I own half dozen Photoshop books, and find this one to be the best of the aftermarket publications. The user manual is better still but harder to understand. I found that most people would learn quicker with a book like this. and just plain trying out all the things on the menu. Go for it.

I'm fairly new to Photoshop (including elements), and image editing in general, and this was a great book for not only getting started, but getting comfortable with all of the major (and the less-often-used) features of Photoshop Elements. The book was a little intimidating at first (almost 500 pages), but it's well organized, with a nice table of contents and index, so it's not hard to find the topic you're looking for. The author does a great job of explaining each manipulation step in detail (with tons of pictures!), so it would be hard to get lost when following along. I especially liked how the author referenced PSE7's menus frequently, letting you know just how to navigate through the software to find the specific tools and features you're looking for. To make learning the software even easier, the author has put together a collection of files you can use to "work along" with the book using the same images (available at the book's website, [...])

Having worked through this book and played with Photoshop Elements 7 for a while now, I can't see anything a home user would need to do with a photo that wouldn't be covered by this book (and software). That's nice, since Photoshop CS4 costs so much more. This book, and Photoshop Elements 7, would be a great choice for anyone wanting to manipulate images in just about any way you can think of.

If this book somehow isn't enough for you, and you're already comfortable with all of the software's features (or you just want to learn more), the author has another book on PSE7 for advanced users: Advanced Photoshop Elements 7 for Digital Photographers

Although I've used both the full Photoshop (through CS3), as well as Elements (through 7), Photoshop can often leave me feeling like I've been asked to take the controls of a 747 jetliner - there's way too many knobs to twiddle, displays to check, and levers to pull.

Like a visitor to a strange city, I know how to get my work done, which sights to gaze in wonder at, and most importantly which areas to avoid. As long as I follow my pre established workflows, I often am able to do what I need without getting my brain tied up in knots.

And, that is exactly why I wish I had read this book a few years ago when I first started using this software.

Mr Andrews has taken painstaking care to highlight almost every dialog, toolbar, and panel that you are likely to encounter in Elements. The book uses a full color visual format which works wonderfully as an introduction to the software. In other words, this is the manual that should have been included along with the product.

The downside to this is that advanced users will find little new here. I personally did find some useful nuggets of information on the Organizer, but for the most part this was familiar ground, explained well.

Turns out that Mr Andrews has a second book that seems to be geared at more experienced users. I was impressed enough by this format, that I have purchased the second part - "Advanced Photoshop Elements 7 for Digital Photographers".

Happy Editing!
- Damodar

Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
***** Highly recommended with warm fuzzies!

As an experienced user of various Photoshop software, I still found much of this book to be useful. Its subtitle of "A visual introduction to digital photography" is an accurate description of the book: the book starts off with discussing various concepts of digital photography that budding novices who are just starting out with digital photography and post-processing software may not understand or be aware of. I especially like the very effective use of numerous screenshots that accompany all the many instructional step-by-step tutorials within the book. You would think that all tutorial guides that instruct the reader on a subject matter which is, by its very nature, entirely a visual process, would all include lots of screenshots that explicitly point out what button or menu you should click next, or show the before/after effects of various image manipulation, but that is unfortunately not the case with all Photoshop books being written. And the screenshots are diagrammed with lots of red-colored arrows, ovals, and squares that effectively direct the user to look at that spot on the screenshot; again, you would think that more books would use this technique, but many books just present screenshots without any accompanying diagramming/arrows/circles/highlighting, and the user is left to wonder what button was clicked to arrive at that screenshot or what button/link to click next from that screen. So both the written and graphical content of this book is clearly and effectively explained to the reader.

I am a total newbie to Elements 7. I'm not a professional photographer and only bought the software to help with some very specific tasks I need to do with some pictures for a newsletter. I like this book because it has high quality color pictures, annotated with detailed instructions on how to do each task. Since I only use select features of Elements 7, and don't really want to take the time to learn the whole package inside and out, it is nice to have a book like this that is laid out by function. For anything I am unclear how to do, I can just look up the tasks in this book and follow along with the pictures and step by step instructions.