40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques with Photoshop Elements 5.0 (Go Digital) [DVD-ROM]

Youngjin Com (Creator)

Book Description

Series: Go Digital | Publication Date: April 1, 2007

With digital camera usage now established, the demand for easy, affordable photo editing tools has increased. Adobe's Photoshop Elements leads the way as an affordable image editing tool. This easy-to-follow, full-color guide shows all digital photographers how to make their photos look their best with dozens of well-organized, hands-on techniques. Readers learn how to change or replace a color, enhance faces, fix burred images, correct poor exposures, create a slide show, and more.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Founded in 1987, Youngjin.com is a leading South Korean book publisher. They're known for great graphics and digital photography books, featuring exceptionally stylish designs and consistently high quality images.

Product Details

• DVD-ROM: 200 pages
• Publisher: YoungJin.com; 3rd edition (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8931433700
• ISBN-13: 978-8931433708
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,990,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to photo retouching, July 23, 2007

By 

Erik Sherman - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques with Photoshop Elements 5.0 (Go Digital) (DVD-ROM)

I had received a review copy of 40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques with Photoshop Elements (published by Young Jin) from the US distributor, O'Reilly Media. It's thin as such guides go - 208 pages - but if you haven't yet gone beyond taking a digital picture into actually manipulating images, this a good introduction.

It's based around Photoshop Elements - a "lite" version of Photoshop that I've mentioned before - and even comes with a trial version on an accompanying CD. This isn't a comprehensive title on the subject of digital retouching; you can literally read a number of books on the subject and still not know everything about it. But as a way of getting your feet wet, it's solid.

Instead of learning one general technique after another, the book guides you through, as the title says, 40 different things you might want to do, incorporating what you need to know for each one. It's actually not all retouching in the classic sense of fixing a visual problem, though there is plenty of that. You start with learning how to correct contrast, move into gaining control over the colors in a photo, then get to a chapter called Enhancing Portraits, with some tricks I haven't seen before, like adding eye shadow to the image of a woman who wasn't wearing makeup. The book finally moves into general editing, adding special effects, and even such topics as adding motion blur and making greeting cards and web banners.

Of course, you can't expect to have all the information you would get in a larger volume. For example, they show one technique for creating high contrast black and white images from color ones, but there are at least three ways I can think of to also create black and white results, but with even more control. However, for someone new to photo manipulation - or someone, like me, who knows a fair amount but is always looking for new things to learn - this is a good book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for any general-interest photo computer collection., October 5, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques with Photoshop Elements 5.0 (Go Digital) (DVD-ROM)

The updated third edition of 40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques makes for a top pick for any owner of Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0: it tells how to touch up photos, add color to black and white shots, open and process RAW image files and more - but uses a series of step-by-step color screens for clear examples of the entire process. These color screen shots make for a much easier manual for beginners than most - and make 40 DIGITAL PHOTO RETOUCHING essential for any general-interest photo computer collection.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quick intro to Photoshop Elements 5, June 5, 2007

By 

W. F. Borman "Former Web Editor, SW Indiana P... (Evansville, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques with Photoshop Elements 5.0 (Go Digital) (DVD-ROM)

Adobe's Photoshop Elements 5.0 (PE5) is an advanced photo editor that combines most of the special tools of the standard bearer, Photoshop, with affordable cost and a manageable learning curve. The current version 5 also includes an organizer that lets the user assemble his pictures in albums, combine them in slide shows on DVDs, and more.

For those who want to get a quick overview of many of the powerful tools available in PE the book by Zack Lee is an excellent guide. (Note: the author of the first edition is listed on the O'Reilly Web site as John Kim). In short chapters it leads the reader step-by-step through various editing procedures, using photos provided on a CD included with the book. Many basic editing steps can be achieved in different ways using the large selection of available tools, and the author purposely varies common procedures from example to example to optimize the learning experience. Of course, a complete discussion of all the tools available in PE5 requires a heftier text, such as O'Reilly's Photoshop Elements 5 - The Missing Manual.

After a brief introductory overview of the Editor window the following 6 chapters cover Correcting Contrast, Manipulating Colors, Enhancing Portraits, Editing Skills and Special Effects, Very Special Effects, and Using and Sharing Images. Going beyond the standard editing tools provided in basic photo editors, the reader also gets exposed to the many powerful special tools such as layers, levels, and the many brushes and erasers that do a lot more than the names would imply. With special tools portraits are made more flattering by adjusting skin color and retouching skin imperfections, resizing eyes, and streamlining jowly cheeks. A nice snapshot can be changed into an attractive portrait by blurring the background and removing background objects altogether. The possibilities are seemingly endless.

The book is attractively bound and presents step-by-step colorful screen shots of the photos at the different stages of editing, as well as of the corresponding editor windows. Sometimes the tool marks, such as the "crawling ants" outlines of selected objects, are hard to distinguish in the illustrations, but this is usually not a great obstacle in following the examples.

After completing the examples in the book the reader has been exposed to many of the powerful editing tools in Photoshop Elements 5.0. A useful index makes it easy to go back to specific examples for a refresher on how to perform certain adjustments or how to use certain tools. Highly recommended.