Customer Reviews

How to Wow: Photoshop CS3 for Photography

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3 star:		(1)
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How to Wow: Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, by Jack Davis
Jack Davis is a Photoshop Hall of Fame member, as well as a part of the "Dream Team" that teaches at Photoshop World conferences. So, not surprisingly, Jack knows his Photoshop stuff. And, more important for anyone planning to buy this book, he knows how to show and tell his readers everything they need to recreate his fine Photoshop techniques.
This is strictly a how-to book (as the title suggests), and is meant to be more of a reference than a cover-to-cover read. The goal of the book is to allow non-experts to make significant improvements in their good-but-not-great images. Some of the areas covered are facial retouching and body sculpting, Bridge and Camera Raw workflow enhancements, black and white conversions and hand tinting and non-destructive workflows.
How to Wow is considered an intermediate-to-advanced Photoshop book, and much of the initial image processing relies heavily on ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). The good news is that, even if you're not proficient in using Raw, HTW provides an excellent introduction and overview of this must-use Photoshop application.
HTW come with a CD that lets readers use Jack's techniques as they follow along with his text. He also offers a Web site where there is additional text-related material (including some Photoshop actions and presets). I recommend How to Wow to anyone who is serious about learning and using Photoshop and who wants to take the time to let Jack guide you through some excellent advanced techniques.

Absolutely great job, Mr Davis! Lot better ideas than from Kelby's books. It's not a book for new guys in Photoshop. You need to be at least familiar with all basic things. Highly recommended for all photographers.

This book is helpful to those who are learning Photoshop CS3 and already have a basic understanding of the program. Someone who is a beginner might have problems because it isn't a step by step, it assumes you know where some things are already.

It did not actually evoke many "WOWs!" but it can help jump-start CS3 for you in the beginning. How to Wow PS CS3 can be effective in solving common and not so common problems. It is a supplementary resource, not a main course. Even then, the most stubbornly elusive issue for me with any of such titles is figuring out what is the best match in determining the right book for what is a very diverse readership. By that I mean in regards to both the level required to use the book and the style of teaching used in the book. Moreover, the two are not necessarily found in the same book as in the split between fans of Scott Kelby's baby step by baby step method he effectively used in The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter), and those readers who learn from him but do not appreciate the author's sometimes intrusive sense of humor. Like Kelby, Davis tells and shows you how to do things, not why, as you could frankly in any title written by the late Bruce Fraser. To also imply something is easy or simple or right for you in any recommended book is problematic. Davis' book clearly has a different niche from more advanced books like Real World Adobe Photoshop CS3 or the authoritative CMS book Real World Color Management (2nd Edition) or the tutorial books with DVD video like Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-On-One or more comprehensive, reference style books like the compilation in Photoshop CS3 Bible and its family of titles.

Jack Davis is an affable teacher and a straightforward writer. He knows what he is doing and he can instill confidence in his readers. He addresses a variety of problems that many photographers might need to resolve in their files such as yellow stains on subjects' teeth. This is a book about tweaking many kinds of shots from portraits to landscapes in natural and artificial light. The funniest example of an improved photo digitally body sculpts a man's beer belly physique to transform it into a trim figure. But in another example where glare on eyeglasses ruins a studio portrait of Mr. Davis he suggests an unusual solution. It requires taking two shots of any bespectacled sitter, one with, and one without glasses, followed by adjusting both files in PS. A mask for the frames is made on a separate layer and the two images are blended together followed by yet another stage. He "paints" some glare back into the edited glasses to make it look like a professsional portrait. Instead, I recommend, beginning to learn how to light people in the studio. Bad lighting created an avoidable problem. PS can be the wrong option as well as take more time to "fix" unnecessary mistakes without ever resolving the problems at their source. You can quickly learn to control minor issues like lens glare but more importantly, you can discover how to understand as well as to proficiently use light both technically and artistically with books like Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting and a portrait lighting "workshop" like the book, Sculpting with Light: Techniques for Portrait Photographers. Avoid accidental misery.

A subjective judgment is necessary so I will put this Davis book into the "Tips and Tricks" category as opposed to Katrin Eismann's deeper and more detailed, "Professional" users' category, such as Adobe Photoshop Restoration & Retouching (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) or Photoshop Masking & Compositing (VOICES). That is not to say that professionals could not learn from Davis or Kelby's very succesful series of books, because they do. To provide a wide scope, I offer a variety of titles here. You can read more about ones that interest you here at Amazon and elsewhere. These alternatives may appeal to you more or less than the Wow book since they cover a more representative range in PS readership's diversity. It really is about matching your skills, knowledge and expectations with the best choices for you at each particular stage of your learning. Secondly, you, the reader, need to discriminate because it is now customary to make purchases--sight unseen--which really is the underlying problem here. Thirdly, there is actually more than one level across a number of categories of expertise that matter here. That helps explain the level of frustration and disappointment in many negative reviews from readers of the gamut of PS books who ultimately resorted to heuristics regardless of reading reviews, including mine. Forgive the oversimplification but it is inevitable unless we stop shopping like this online and instead go to a bookstore. Imagine!

A very sharp writer of conventional DSL and PS titles, Tim Grey, takes an unconventional approach in Take Your Best Shot: Tim Grey Tackles Your Digital Darkroom Questions. The questions have been carefully chosen. See its comments and reviews to see if that might work for you. There are several more excellent writers specializing in digital photography and more advanced uses of Camera Raw and CS3.

Most digital photo coarses are taught by erogant nerds that try to prove how smart they are by teaching in digital language that is hard to follow. This author tlks plain English and gets to the point quickly and understandably. Amazon makes it equaly esay to obtain the material.