Customer Reviews

The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book: Harnessing Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool, covers Photoshop CS3

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I added this volume to my rapidly growing photoshop library in order to learn more about layers, which is indeed a very powerful and most useful weapon in the photoshop arsenal.

And there is a lot of very useful information in here, which I reckon is both the blessing and the curse of this book. After reading this book, you will definitely understand layers. However, there is a lot of text and, as a reviewer before me pointed out, not that many pictures, which to my mind, is not a very good combination. The text can be a bit hard to follow without any prior understanding of photoshop I should imagine. I was certainly glad, that I had already purchased and read other books before this one.

I'm not a big fan of the Scott Kelby approach to photography or photo editing. I think he oversimplifies the learning process in a way that makes you learn some of the hows but none of the whys. This book takes the exact opposite of Kelby's approach and loads everything you could possibly want to know about photoshop layers in your lap. This does make the book a bit heavy. You need to concentrate while using this book and you probably need to go over some of the things a couple of times.

So in conclusion I'll say, that this book is very good and very thorough, but does need an effort to go through. I wouldn't recommend it to a complete novice either, but once you get into photoshop I think it is defintely worth acquiring.

This is a great book for Photoshop. I own several Photoshop books and this one is by far the best I have read so far. From the title you might think it is just for advanced users, since it seems to be rather specialized. Even the author seems to think only experienced users will read the book. That is all wrong.

By the time you have finished a third of this 250 page book, you will not only know the layers palette (there is a great diagram on page 6), and the layers menu. He sets out his idea of the thirty essential tools, commands, palettes, and menus that you will use most often (with shortcuts) all in easy to refer to tables on pages 35-41. There are some more tables for easy reference back in chapter 1.

If you do the exercises, in that same first third of the book you will have experimented with the creation, duplication, deletion, manipulation, and grouping of layers (of course), but also color correction, techniques for selecting objects; cutting, copying, pasting, and moving objects; color balance; and most importantly how all that can be organized with the use of layers. The rest of the book explores other aspects of Photoshop all in the context of layers.

What makes this book worth five stars is that he very clearly explains not only what is being done, but also the logic of what is being done. He uses layers to organize his work and explains this workflow method in some detail. Someone just starting with Photoshop could use this book to keep from falling into some bad habits that come from poking around, which is what some of the Photoshop books with more general titles seem to do.

The author does not take on too much, but enough to do anything you would normally want to do as a photographer. He also gives you the background from which you can explore beyond the book.

I have a veritable library of Photoshop Books. When I read through this new book, I was really impressed at how well the author covered the subject matter. The exercises & CD made the book easier to follow and gave me a much better understanding of levels than I've been able to get from any other sources I've tried . I would recommend this book to anyone who is an intermediate to advanced user of Photoshop as a reference. . I would also recommend it to people just starting as a basic Photoshop companion book.

This book is more complete than the average Photoshop book. (I currently have 6 books in my personal library on various Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom topics.) The approach that is taken with this book provides more funadmentals than usual - the "why's" of what is presented rather than the usual cookbook, "follow along" style that is typically used in these type books. While the book does provide some of the underlying fundamentals, I took off one star from my rating because more improvements in describing the "whys" could be made to make it even more useful. But overall, this is better than most, and I would recommend it for both beginning and intermediate users of Photoshop programs (from Elements to CS3 versions).

Fascinating
I first found out about Richard buying an old copy of his Photoshop 5 How-To (Adobe Photoshop 5 How-To) book at a garage sale. It was a fat thing, dog-eared and ravaged. It didn't seem particularly inviting but it was cheap. "Good book." the seller said, "A little esoteric." I didn't read it in order and jumped into the Scanning and Duotoning chapters as these were what interested be as I had a scanner and all these old photos I wanted to make digital. I didn't even have a digital camera yet. Admittedly not everything in the book was for me (I don't do anything with web graphics), but the detail and depth in the chapters I needed was curiously interesting and appealed to my darkroom beginnings. That was about 5 years ago. Since, I've bought a digital camera, taken about 20,000 digital photos, and bought several other books by Richard. They just keep getting better.

By the time I got to this book I'd already had some experience with layers from Richard's other books but this one puts it all together for me. The book seems to culminate the teachings of Richard's by melding layers with the process of image editing so that layers drive and organize what you are doing. It might just be that I have experience with Richard's books, but this one seemed to cover the gamut, from introduction to layers, the palette and its functions, through masking, layering changes, organizing, and retaining layers for later changes.

Though the information on scanning and duotoning is no longer in his books, the subjects almost don't belong and the books he writes seem to me to have kept up with the times, and continue to deliver depth on the subject of image editing and sense about digital images. I've read other books that flit through a change or technique as if the steps explain themselves. What is there ends up being just a set of steps, as if the authors had no idea why they were doing these things and couldn't explain it. Some books I've read are fluffed up with filler. Those books are disposable. As I get deeper into image editing, it is Richard's reasons for doing things that make sense, and I want to know how to edit my images and why, not just to waltz through a set of steps like completing them was learning.

There are plenty of step-by-steps, but all of them seem to have a bigger purpose than just getting you through the steps and breathing a sign of relief when they go right. The way he works the subject just works for me. And he does more that I don't see other authors doing: he answers emails (usually), keeps an informative blog, and lets you know his email address. I've even taken one of his courses at betterphoto.com which was a great experience.

I know why that Photoshop 5 book was dog-eared, and why eventually in my hands it fell apart: I could refer to parts over and over and learn more each time, as the owner from the garage sale had done before me. If you are serious about understanding Photoshop, you won't lose with this book.

I purchased this book and another newer layers book at the same time, hoping to really dig in and get a good grasp on a great feature of Photoshop I want to know in and out to improve my workflow. If you're new enough to Adobe Photoshop that layers confuse you, this book might be too in-depth. I personally find it a bit boring. Also, not enough images. Designers and photographers looking to learn Photoshop are (presumably) visual people. Help us out with big gorgeous color images. I'm well educated, but I am BUSY! I don't need quite so much detail. Just SHOW me how to do it. Just my opinion, but that's what these reviews are for, right?! Maybe for the next edition. Cute cover design, though!

Already a fan of Richard's other books for Elements and his blog, I bought this one knowing it was for Photoshop anyway. Let me tell you, it isn't too difficult to adapt these techniques to Elements 6! Layers work just about the same way apparently, and with a few tweaks here or there everything works fine. This book showed me lots of things I never knew about layers -- what I knew mostly was that I was under-utilizing them, and the book made the claim they are the ultimate Photoshop tool. I am already better working with masking (that you CAN use in Elements 6), and have a much better understanding of using layers to improve my images every time. I shoot a lot of nature photos, and now they come alive. Partly from things I learned in Richard's other books. I've made changes in my process based on suggestions and techniques here and I see the difference. Thanks Richard!

You Will learn about layers from this guy.He assume you know something about layers to begin with so he gets to the nuts and bolts fairly quickly.Follow along and you will become quite good at this very powerful tool but also one of Photoshop most difficult tools to master.A great book to have.Thank You.

In my oppinion, unless you've had a significant amount of experience using layers I would not recommend this book. It does not clearly lead you through the projects. It's missing steps, completed thoughts, and words to where you're left on your own to try and figure things out.

If anyone knows of a better book for a beginner I'd love to hear about it please.

Thank you

The cliche that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" applies to this book, especially when it is compared to a competitive volume, "Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature". The latter is far more breezy, has more pictures to guide the reader and is easier to read. It is well suited to the hobbyist.

This book, however, is more oriented to the working professional to whom time is money and perfection is what keeps existing clients and brings in new ones.

Richard Lynch writes from the perspective of a working professional: he talks of working on images with hundreds of layers, even one with over 2,000 layers. His perspective - and I suspect his target audience - are different than Matt Kloskowski's. Lynch's style is slower and more deliberate. The lack of adequate numbers of illustrations can be irritating on occasion because it leaves Lynch in the position of guiding the user through the manipulation of graphics - without suitable graphics at hand.

Does the book teach you how to use layers? Yes. Is it the easiest book on layers to read and learn from? No.

But Lynch's emphasis on workflow will probably appeal more to the professional, actual or aspiring, who needs to maximize the value of their working time.

Either book, in my opinion, will serve you as a way to learn the basics of using Photoshop layers.

Jerry