Customer Reviews

50 Fast Digital Photo Techniques with Photoshop Elements 3

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

First of all it is worth mentioning that this book is really focused on being used in conjunction with Adobe's Photoshop Elements image editing program. Yes, you could probably use this book with other editing programs but it will not be as effective. As far as this being a fantastic way to learn Photoshop Elements...It receives an A++. I bought PS Elements and only had very limited knowledge of how to take advantage of the features. After going through each and every one of the 50 techniques I feel very confident. The CD-Rom that accompanies the book has all the images you will need to learn the 50 techniques and the author does a very good job of walking the reader through step by step. If you are diving into digital photography I would point you toward PS Elements for your editor and this book for learning how to get creative.

I bought this book about 3 weeks prior to purchasing Photoshop Elements and began studying it before using the program. After loading the software, I was editing photos that evening and accomplishing remarkable techniques within 3 days. This is more than a re-writen instruction book- it is a step-by-step guide on how to accomplish 50 different, mostly easy projects that would have taken me weeks to figure out with the instruction manual alone. The results using Photoshop Elements, which is an exellent program, are outstanding.
If you want to use Photoshop Elements, wish to do more than just print snapshots, and want to unleash your full power of artistic license, buy this book.
The author also wrote "Digital Camera Solutions," which is an introduction to digital photography, and which I also enjoyed.

"50 Fast Digital Photo Techniques" is basically a great tutorial on Photoshop Elements, better than the other 2 books I've seen in the bookstores. The CD contains before and after images so you can see how you do on the projects, and every one is self-contained, so you don't have to refer to some earlier project and do that first. All of the projects are quick and practical, and his results are really artistic. Two tables at the end of the book compare the commands of Photoshop Elements to Photoshop LE 5 and Photoshop 6; and to Paint Shop Pro 7, Photo-Paint 10, and Photoimpact 6, so you can also use the techniques with those other programs. I highly recommend this book, which is the best "hands-on" book on a graphics program I have ever used. I am currently trying out the demo version of PE included on the CD and will soon order PE to use with my new digital camera, and with other graphics programs, such as Painter. I am delighted with both the book and the Photoshop Elements program.

Photoshop is the holy grail of image processing programs, but it can also be fairly difficult to master. This book doesn't necessarily demystify PShop, but it does provide some quick, easy-to-use techniques for making something more out of your digital images than just nice snapshots in a digital album.

Learn how to improve images that are iffy, embellish them with vignettes, color changes or filter effects (watercolor, ink sketch and others)or composite them for wholly new images. None of these techniques are hard to follow, and all can be accomplished with a variety of image-editing programs, not just Photoshop. It is, in fact, geared more towards the lower-end Photoshop Elements than the full program. But the information is just as relevant, and though it often requires a bit of translation between program menus, this isn't a difficult thing to do.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants to get involved in digital image-editing, digital art or just a slightly more hands-on approach to improving the summer vacation snaps.

I have this book: it is an excellent 'tutorial' for Photoshop Elements (and digital image editing in general). I'm working my way through the book using the included CD images to learn various techniques. While I don't always agree with the author's 'creative choices,' working through the exercises definately helps one learn various techniques using PS Elements. It also helps present the depth and power of the PS Elements application.
For those who use other photo editing applications, the author has included an Appendix to provide translation tables for popular photo editing applications other than PS Elements.
Using various creative techniques described in the book, I've created some *awesome* images from my personal slide library (scanned using a film/slide scanner). Anyone wanna buy some prints? <grin>

I've bought 2 books on digital photography, this one and the "Complete digital photography". My intention at the time of ordering was to buy a book to learn more about hardware features of digital camera, and how to combine different settings to get the best shots. I thought: "I've got an excellent Canon G2 camera, and the photos it makes are just too fine to edit them with any image processing software". Nevertheless, I ordered this book because it had a very good rating.

To my surprise, the "complete digital photography" did not came out to be of any use for me, because my limited (as I thought before) knowledge of digital camera features was really quite good, and this book (and I guess oll of this kind) is oriented on ONLY THE BEGINNERS in d-photography. Besides, the CD supplied with the book contained images of poor quality.

Contrary to this book, the "50 fast digital photo techniques" came out to be very useful, as it adresses few but VERY USEFUL methods to greatly improve the quality of a digital photo, including advice how to eliminate color cast, a very new (to me) way to make the photo more sharp etc. The great thing about this book is that it contains a CD with 100 photos of a very high quality and size: 50 original photos, and 50 "corrected" photos. There are 50 lessons in the book, and each lesson addresses one specific photo. There is also a very particular instruction how to correct the original photo by YOURSELF to get the final image.

Finally I should say that because I have to shoot too many photos without having enough time to set proper settings on the camera, this book helped me to make an excellent photos of those original shots wich I wanted to delete before.

I am using this book as the text book for our digital imaging class. It gives great examples. Everything you need, including trial versions of several popular image editing software programs and all of the photos you need to complete the exercises, is included on the CD that comes with the book. I reviewed several books before choosing this one.

What a great way to learn the basics of photo editing! The book and CD are designed to try the techniques as you learn them. Having abilities to use the "Digital darkroom" adds a new level to photography. The book addresses editing images from your digital camera or scanned photographs (great for improving old family photos.)

This new book has 50 entirely new techniques AND the CD includes all fifty of the techniques from the first edition for a total of 100 useful and fun techniques.

All other reviews (mostly 5-star reviews) that are posted here are for the first edition and most of those less than excellent reviews are by people who bought the first edition when it was three years old.

Amazon, please fix this!

The author...

A book that won't intimidate or frustrate you. It takes you through step-by-step techniques. Learn important techniques such as sharpening your image, using multiple filters, adding mattes and so much more. This is like a good novel, you don't want to put it down because you will have fun learning and understanding image-editing programs such as Photoshop Elements.
I've brought this book to work to share with our graphics department and they love it. If you want to get to the next level, buy this book.