Customer Reviews

The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book (5th Edition)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

This is a *fantastic* book (providing you don't own the previous versions of it). What some people are calling its main weakness is its greatest source of strength: it has been refined and iterated so many times that the material VERY well-written and usable. Things I appreciate most: The focus is on teaching techniques with Photoshop, not features... many other books show you individual features without the context of a real world problem. Here, they show you how to use combinations of features to reach a desirable, artistically tasteful outcome. They don't just tell you what all the features are, they tell AND SHOW you WHY you would want to use them all and how you need to think about them. (2) they cover all the major ways that one would use Photoshop... for compositing, for web work, for photo touch-up and so on. As such, it's a great reference and I've looked things up over and over in it in the 3 months that I've used it. (It's also in color which gives it a huge advantage over many other books.) Photoshop is an extremely hard program to learn without help, and this the first and only book to have vaulted me into competence and understanding of what is going on.

I agree with the readers, about the book's small changes. Though there haven't been drastic changes in the book, it isn't really fair to give it one star either. The authors managed to cover every new feature and tool, even giving them special coverage, plus the full color layout, makes the book a sheer haven to read. (And also because this book was written for Intermediate-Advanced users, the idiot who bought the book without noticing the fact first has got to be the stupidest person I know.) If the program didn't change, how big of a change do you expect from the book. The coverage from the Photoshop 4 Wow! Book was amazing, so there really isn't much to cover anymore in version 5, I'm sure. This book is great, the CD-ROM, is even better than any other CD-ROM which came with other books I've read, no CD-ROM managed to come up with such great actions and collage layers such as this one.(Due to distribution laws, I'm sure the authors loved to give you a fully functional copy of Alien Skin's Eye Candy and Kai's Power Tools, but couldn't)

This book is full of techniques which go beyond simple basics. I almost did not buy it because of the negative reviews included here but now that I have it I am totally pleased and baffled by the negativity seen in some of the reviews. The photos, colors, illustrations, and text are excellent.

My biggest regret is that I did not discover this book long before I did. The problem with many computer books is they are too simplistic OR assume too much of the reader. This would be right down the alley of either intermediate or advanced Photoshop users. Beginners might have to read through everything a dozen times, but it would be great for beginners, too. The accompanying CD is also very worthwhile. Too many CDs have the usual pap on them (how many versions of Hot Dog Pro do YOU own?) but not this one. Very useable examples, very useable plug-ins and demos make this very, very worthwhile.

I liked Photoshop 5.5 Wow book. For a start, it has high quality color screenshots. I am still surprised to see many Photoshop and other art titles showing up printed in greyscale, good color is essential in books like this one. As for content, once again, we have to read about stuff that's already exposed in the original PS documentation from Adobe, plus the usual clichés, color theory, etc. Fortunately, the amount of redundant information is reasonably acceptable. As for really creative ideas, this book does have some. A few interesting tutorials are perhaps the best of the book, which includes some chapters on natural-looking painting (For those won don't want to go for Corel's Painter series), and the usual topics. (Nothing like checking the Table of Contents link) In my case, I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Montage and Collage, and also on masks and adjustment layers.

This title is very acceptable to most beginners, (some might have trouble with some tutorials) and has value even to advanced users, but those will definitely not get all that much for the money. These days you can read impressive Photoshop tutorials on the web for free (Phong, and Eyeball are just a few examples of such sites) and books have to offer more and more to be worth the price. But still, I liked the Wow 5.5 book, it's far from reaching the depth I wanted, but it's not as basic as I feared it could be. Very full of color and some interesting tutorials. There are some bad aspects, mostly small details, like absence of a complete list of keyboard shortcuts. They are not compiled, but somewhat spread on the whole book. The showcase of artist projects was a good idea, but it would be better to have the .PSD files available for tutorials. Yes yes, I know, Copyright issues might be the reason here, but it would be a lot more impressive to see them as tutorials than just JPGs with some "how-to" explanations. Also, I have little interest in seeing several pages full of examples of the use of certain Plug-Ins that everybody already knows pretty well. It's mostly just to fill space, unless you really use the covered Plug-Ins in depth (but in that case, you should know the effects pretty well by now. Eye candy, but not really all that useful). This is also a very broad title, if you need detail in some areas (color correction, Collages,etc) you will need more books. It is true that it adds little from previous versions, but that's hardly a reason for 1 star reviews. If you own a previous PS Wow book, it might not be worth the upgrade, but for the other readers, it's worth taking a look.

In general, interesting title, definitely worth checking out. I'd lose the plug-in pages and would add more depth to some areas, but in any case, most beginner-to-intermediate readers will probably learn (or remember) something. If you're buying, you might want to consider waiting for a possible 6.0 version, which might cover the new slicing and vector drawing tools of Photoshop 6.

When I first purchased Photoshop 5.5, I quickly became frusterated with the product. I knew it was the best graphics program around but as a new user I was finding it very difficult to learn. I bought this WOW book and went through it from cover to cover. I found that it did demand a lot of effort and determination on my part to understand the material. There is a lot of new terminology introduced which is completely foreign to those of us with no background in design arts. I did end up rereading each chapter several times to get the most out of it. I have to give the authors full credit for not what I consider an excellent book. They will not spoon feed you step by step instructions on every detail. They present techniques and sufficient theory to let you work on your own. If you can't handle reading anything semi-technical don't bother with this book. On the other hand if you possess even moderate intelligence you should be able to handle this book with a little bit of effort. It gives you all you need to know to do expert level design work with PhotoShop. The effort was worth it...I LOVE PHOTOSHOP!

First, if you own the Photoshop 4 Wow book, you'll probably don't want this one (there's a lot of repetition from the 4, which I find excusable since a lot of Photoshop 5/5.5 is the same as in version 4).

Second: even though it says on the back cover that it's for beginners up to advanced users, in my opinion the ones who'll benefit the most from it are the intermediate users - those who, without being Photoshop gurus, are already familiar with Photoshop (at least a little). I think this is a great book, with a lot of information, tips and tricks that will probably make using Photoshop a more enjoyable and fruitful experience for everybody, but almost certainly for intermediate users.

However it would be even better if the CD included all the pictures, photos and presets necessary for the book's projects/tutorials, instead of only some of them (that's why I didn't give it 5 stars).

Because of its short bursts of information and jump-around style, this book is not a good way for beginners to learn Photoshop. HOWEVER, if you have mastered the basics and want to know how apply them to particular situations and needs, the book definitely lives up to its title. I found a great deal of exciting and useful information here.

I have been a fan of the WOW books, having the painter WOW, Web design WOW, and photoshop 4 WOW. I must say this recent Photoshop 5/5.5 WOW book is nothing but daylight robbery. If you're going to write a new version of a book, put some * NEW * content in it, or tell your readers this is just an update covering new features of a product.

Seriously, beginners would be better with the photoshop classroom in a book, and the experienced photoshop'ers may like Photoshop Studio secrets (a personal favorite).

There are a few must-haves in the graphic design world. One is PhotoShop. The other is a great PhotoShop book. This is definitely one of them. Cover to cover you find useful, easy to understand steps that lead you to a great design or understanding of a design concept in PhotoShop. It's great for a beginner to pro and there's always something we can learn from it. PhotoShop is one of those programs that one will probably never fully learn or utilize so it's always good to have a reference book on hand that makes it easy to produce the image you need. Buy this book. The CD that comes with is a valuable tool as well. Go on, buy it!