Customer Reviews

Beginner's Guide to Adobe Photoshop: Easy Lessons for Rapid Learning and Success

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Although I don't agree that Amherst books are always a good choice, this one certainly is. There are a few excellent books out there for those wanting to invest the time in learning Photoshop inside out (Real World Photoshop 7, for example, as long as you have the time to read a book of a few hundred pages before you dive in). Usually I want the "most book" I can get for my money, but one asset of this book is its small size. It is an unintimidating introduction to a potentially intimidating program. The book really does start from the beginning, using clear and simple language, so you won't feel frustrated over terms you don't understand (although you might consider reading the part about Photoshop's tools first, then come back to the start of the book). The author manages to boil down Photoshop into several essential and logically chosen components - no small feat considering this program does just about everything. The author's distillation goes a long way toward helping a reader get a sense of this program. You will come away with a complete introduction. In the small space of just over 100 pages, the author also teaches you how to do many of the tasks you'd be most likely to want to do. Even experienced users will probably learn something new or find something that something they were fuzzy about is clarified. Her book, Traditional Photographic Effects with Adobe Photoshop, is an equally good choice, after you read her introductory text.

If the huge and complicated Adobe Photoshop manuals have scared you off, this book can ease you into using Adobe Photoshop and remove your fears. The subtitle for Perkins' book is, "Easy lessons for rapid learning and success," and that's exaclty what this book offers.

Amherst Media's books are always in an easy-to-follow and well-illustrated format. This book is no different. Perkins explains Photoshop terminology easy to understand language. Not only is the language clear, but there are illustrations of what she is explaining - she leaves no room for doubt.

This compact manual holds much information, and I think if you learn what Perkins teaches, you can easily move up to the more complicated Adobe Photoshop manuals and understand what they are talking about.

Really a very nice book to have on hand, especially if you have been scared off from Adobe Photoshop in the past.

I wanted to get a strong but basic overview of all the features of Photoshop. Based on other reviews I thought this book would be great. The section on filters tells you what filters are available, but doesn't go through the differences between any of them. The theme throughout most of the book is: Play with all of them to see what the differences are and if you make a mistake, there's always the Edit>Undo command. If this is the way you want to learn, don't bother buying the book. I was very disappointed.

Michelle Perskins' Beginner's Guide To Adobe Photoshop, 3rd Edition provides an excellent basic set of structured lessons to help beginners with photography background enter the digital world of Photoshop editing. Here are foundation lessons on everything from rendering and resolution to file formats and working with image enhancements. Combine these with basics on how to remove dust, dirt and scratches from a picture and you have an excellent primer.

This is a great beginners guide to Adobe Photoshop. The author takes the time to explain all of the important tools in this comprehensive software program. You will certainly gain many valuable insights in how to improve your photographs.

Being computer literate but novice in photography I bought the book expecting to be hand-held, as a toddler; It turns out that I am much more of an expert in photography than I expected: All the information presented in this book is absolutely common sense, there is no reason to pay in order to get advice on "what is a tool; what is cropping, etc". What this book is missing is the absolutely first and last steps, and the most important: how do you bring an image into photoshop from your camera and, how do you save an image outside photoshop, after you edited it.
The book deals perfunctorily with the resolution, but not with how to change and save the image after you modify it for emailing, which i think is much more important than dedicating 2 pages to LIQUEFY. In conclusion, this book dedicates way too much time (and paper) to advanced details (and does not explain them sufficiently to be used well) and way too little on the real basic stuff. IF YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT PHOTOSHOP AND EXPECT TO GET A RUNNING START, THIS IS NOT THE BOOK TO DO IT!

I originally got this from my local library and it was so good I decided to buy one for myself. I'm a complete beginner and all the other books I looked at assumed you knew what things like layers meant or went into huge complicated detail that put you off. This showed me the basics of what I needed to know.

It's very easy to follow and actually covers huge ground. I would agree that afterwards you need another book for the advanced stuff, but I think without this book I wouldn't have been ready for that.

I really enjoyed this book ,it was easy to follow and I learned alot from it. I had no prior experience with photoshop what so ever, but now I can say that after reading this book I know the basics of the software. Thanks alot Michelle 4 writing a beginner's guide 2 photoshop!!!!

Very clear displays of toolboxes and pallettes, excellent comparisons of the various effects on a single photo, easy, user-friendly, concise and clear. Especially good for people who are newbies or paranoid about using a computer.

Stumbled on this book at the library and just had to have my own copy! This is really a great reference book. Recommend to anyone who wants to understand some of the everyday uses for Photoshop.