Customer Reviews

Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide (Miscellaneous)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this book! The two great loves of my life are Photoshop and photography (not necessarily in that order), and now I'm adding this book to my list. It's the first book on Photoshop that I've seen that doesn't insult the intelligence of photographers. The author really seems to know and understand our needs and viewpoints. The book showed me how to duplicate many of my favorite photographic effects in Photoshop.

I really liked the sections on retouching and compositing. I wished they were longer. Lots of my photos have...er...problems and I spend a lot of time in Photoshop trying to fix them. I found some interesting techniques for repairing pictures that were less than perfect, and a few really good ideas for combining several so-so photos into one really great picture.

The color is great. I'm getting tired of picking up Photoshop books and finding only an 8 or 16 page "gallery" section with a few color pictures. I want color on every page! It's a *color* image editor, isn't it? Thank you for this great book!

I must have purchased 20 different Photoshop books through the years, starting with Photoshop 5.5, but this one is my absolute favorite! I originally was attracted to it because it claimed to appeal to photographers. I was skeptical, but it sure enough was full of the kind of details that serious photographers look for when editing images. However, it turned out to be a darned good Photoshop book, too. I can recommend it highly.

It helps if you know something about photography and Photoshop before you begin, as this is not aimed at the absolute neophyte. But if you know how to use Photoshop's basic tools (or even just know where they are) and can find the shutter release button on your camera, this book will help you improve your skills in both image editing and photography.

The CD-ROM was a welcome addition for a change. This one included all the pictures in the book, plus the files the author used to produce his amazing effects. I worked through all the examples, but the techniques I learned gave me the push I needed to go out and shoot some photos of my own so I could play with them, too.

I received this book ... and the only thing wrong with it is I can't get enough of these great ideas. I admit there are enough cool techniques in this book than you'd find in books that are twice as long. It's all meat, and full of stunning effects. I've managed to skim through it and try out five or six of the projects, and I just know that when I'm finished I'm going to be looking for more books like this one.

I'm not much of a photographer, but I still found the "photographer's viewpoint" angle fascinating. The author's description of both conventional photographic techniques and ways to get the same look with Photoshop made me want to go fire up my point-and-shoot camera, or maybe seriously consider that digital camera I've been looking at. After reading this book, I know I can do better.

The parts dealing with Photoshop are really good, too. I've always found Photoshop fairly confusing, but I guess I know enough to handle the step by step instructions in this book. At least, the photos I edited looked a lot better than when I started.

It will take me a few weeks (or months) to exhaust all the tricks I found in this book. By then, I'm hoping the author will have PHOTOSHOP 7 Photographers Guide PART TWO ready for me. Thanks!

The book claims to be photoshop from a photographers point of view. Based on the books style, I believe it's intended for someone who knows photography well and is just moving to photoshop. It's definately not supposed to be an advanced photoshop book, but the problem I see with it, is that it's really NOT a great introduction book to photoshop either (even for a photographer). Some advanced concepts are dealt with too quickly, and some basics expanded more than nescessary, not to mention some bothersome bad habit techniques he instructs the reader to do. For example Levels are skipped in favour of brightness/contrast. I realize that he wanted to keep the book simple, but for photographers, the basics of Levels should be covered properly.

There is some useful and interesting information in the book, but a lot of the times it feels like the author is trying to achieve the proper word count for the chapter. There's also a cheesy advertisement chapter on a particular 3rd party plug-in set that the author "recommends". He claims they are quite useful to photographers, but they are obviously tasteless, and are all effects that could be achieved manually with a better knowledge of the base version of Photoshop.

I've always liked Adobe's Classroom in a book for learning the basics. And then if you want to pursue the photography angle, I'd recommend following that up with either 'Photoshop 7 Artistry' or 'Photoshop Master Class", both are fairly advanced but they teach how to make nice images.

There are several things that set this book apart from other Photoshop 7 books that are aimed at photographers. First, it's all in color, which is far superior to books that try to illustrate color techniques in black and white. Second, the CD of the actual images used in the book make it possible to work right along with the lessons. Finally, the author encourages readers to contact him at the e-mail address listed in the book, and to visit his Web page. He has been most helpful when I've had questions or ran into a problem.

Anyone who has actually read this book would realize that it's an all-new first edition written specifically for Photoshop 7 and NOT updated from a previous book. I'm told that virtually all the images in this book, other than some faded or old photos used to illustrate restoration techniques, were taken between 2000 and 2002. I liked the illustrations and techniques covered here. They're not something you'll see in any other book.

Someone who has never used Photoshop before will find this book fairly challenging, as it assumes you already can use most of the tools, and covers some things in a bit of depth. For example, I'd never before seen such a thorough explanation of why converting a color photo to black and white yields such poor results in many cases. The author provides examples of photos that differ widely in color saturation or hue, but still look the same in grayscale. Then, he shows some tricks for producing an accurate black-and-white conversion. I really learned from this chapter.

The photography angle is first-rate, too. Anyone who has a love of photography and wants to learn Photoshop from a photographer's perspective will love this book!

Every buyer has different needs. Mine are simple. I'm a serious photographer,and mechanical stuff is not my best talent or skill area. For me, to work with Photoshop is fun and exciting because I can take my photography results to a new level. At the same time, it's totally terrifying. Busch's book is great for me because he includes the CD for me to work with, so I don't have to learn with my own photos. And he's committed to photography as the ultimate motivation, not just a love of computer gadgetry. The book's example photos are in color and on almost every page. They look like the type of photos I take, not something unachievable. And show what I can do with them. Busch's style is very motivating for non-techies, and building confidence is his best skill as an author. It's refreshing to see a computer or photography author admit that they don't always take perfect photos or do everything right with a computer program. In all his books, Busch is honest about his own experiences and that alone is a motivator for me. I learned a lot here and will use more of it as time goes by while I get more familiar with my Photoshop 7 software.

I am always searching for good books that cover the subject of digital photography and Photoshop. I thought this book was it, but it came up short. There were some good sections, even for the intermediate and expert level, but the majority of it is basic information. Few of the techniques were useful, but most of them were amateurish and not really used in professional photography. The makers of Andromeda filters must have sponsored this book in some fashion as there is a whole chapter dedicated to these filters. Again, most of these filters are not useful in real world applications. Overall I was disappointed in this book.

I bought this at the same time as I got Barry Huggins' Photoshop Retouching Cookbook. While Busch's book has more information, and i am sure it will prove useful, I was a bit disappointed in the caliber of sample photos. All the pics were underexposed, grainy or just plain superficial. Unlike Huggins' book--which contains pics that are beautiful and clear.
I'm only on page 76 of reading Busch's word-for-word, and I've done the sample exercises with the accompanying CD. So far, I've found TWO errors. One on page 75... in regards to vignettes. The instructions leave out a necessary step (drawing the marquee on a separate layer). Same with page 76--it instructs you to start with a b&w image and bring up hues/saturation box. This is impossible to do with grayscale photos, so you have to convert to RGB mode first, a step that is not included in the instructions.
I hope there aren't too many more missing steps throughout the pages.

While this book isn't for the absolute beginner, it really helped me learn about Photoshop as it applies to digital photography. I learned lots of cool tricks for manipulating my images. The step-by-step tutorials showed me how to correct colors, retouch images, and combine several photographs into one great picture.

The book is well-organized into sections that build on each other, so as I worked through the chapters I became more confident and ready to try more challenging things. I think this book has helped me improve my Photoshop skills, and it sure has made me a better photographer.

Although I have never worked in a darkroom, I enjoyed the chapter on duplicating darkroom effects such as solarization and cross processing. I don't really miss not using a darkroom, but I'm glad I didn't miss out on these special effects! I also really liked the chapter on the Andromeda filters for Photoshop. I had never heard of them before, and am glad they were brought to my attention. These seem to be the only software filters that faithfully reproduce the effects of some photographic filters, and I loved using the try-out versions included on the CD-ROM.

Also useful were the working files on the CD, which let me use the exact photos the author worked with. Once I tried out the steps using the original pictures, I was more confident in trying the same techniques on my own photos.

As a crazy cat person, I loved the photos of the adorable kitten, too!

Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide by computer imaging expert David D. Busch is an superbly organized and presented guide to utilizing Photoshop 7 software for both film and digital photography. Packed from cover to cover with a wealth of invaluable tips, tricks, techniques; enhanced full-color photographs; samples of what the software can do; and a great deal more, Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide is a splendid and confidently recommended resource for crafting stunning and unique images, or simply touching up photographs as one desires. An included is an accompanying CD-ROM containing more than 300 color images and demo filters for Andromeda. If you use Photoshop 7, either personally or professionally, then you need your own copy of Photoshop 7: Photographers' Guide!