Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

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

 

 

I felt compelled to write this after reading the first review of this book on Amazon. The person found this book very difficult to read. I am utterly amazed by this. I am a heavy Photoshop user now, but two years ago I was an absolute novice. This is a book I would loved to have had for my version of Photoshop then. It is well written, easy to understand, very well organized and even though I am beyond being a beginner now, there are parts of Photoshop I never bothered to learn about or couldn't understand from other books (even now). I flip to that part of the book and I find a well written and very understandable discusion of that topic. I have been able to learn so much from this book because it is so well written and easy to understand. If the person who left the book is looking for an easier to understand book I certainly wish them luck because this book is one of the best for beginners and more advanced users who never understood certain concepts. The book is also beautifully illustrated and for the price, it is printed on very nice paper. I give this book five stars and would give more stars if allowed.

Photoshop is now a huge and powerful graphics editing program. Trying to learn it can be formidable. So naturally, along comes a Dummies text to alleviate the pain. As with all the books in this series, no prior knowledge of the topic is required of you.

But perhaps it is telling that the book is over 600 pages long. Even in an introductory text, this shows that you can learn a lot about its "special effects" [if I may use that phrase]. The writing style is deliberately casual, and the use of jargon is minimised. Of course, the reference nature of the book is the main reason for its length. But Obermeier shows that much of Photoshop is understandable even to a new user.

Except for the yellow cover, this just doesn't look like a For Dummies book. As soon as you open it you start to see color printing everywhere. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of four color images, and they are scattered throughout the book. (Even the usual 'For Dummies' cartoons are in color.) This isn't at all like a lot of books that only have a few color plates. It also appears to be a higher quality paper that looks brighter than the other books in the series. This makes sense because Photoshop is a highly color oriented software package. The really nice thing about all this is that they didn't raise the cost significantly. A lot of books printed like this one are twice the price.

Of course the real test of a book is not its appearance, but its content. This book is aimed at the beginner to intermediate level user. It kind of combines a tutorial and a reference approach. The first few chapters are really introductory. It doesn't make much sense to jump around in them. But after that the chapters are pretty much stand alone. You can use the index or the general chapter heading to find the particular area that interests you and get the information you need.

This is a welcome addition to photoshop literature. While it's aimed at the beginner, even an expert will find a few points that will help him on his next project. The author runs a graphic design studio in Ventura, CA. She has written several other books on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and teaches at local colleges.

Note that this book only covers Photoshop as part of the CS2 package. You may also want to consider 'Adobe Creative Suite 2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies' to cover the other parts of the suite.

This Photoshop book claims to be 9 books in 1. That may be, but they should have added a tenth to this compilation. There is absolutely nothing in the book about one of Photoshop's most powerful programs: Camera Raw.

I consider this to be a major flaw for this book. There is even a 300 page book on the market that deals just with Camera Raw (Real World Camera Raw with Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser). If you are just using an inexpensive camera that only uses jpeg or perhaps tiff files then you can't use the Raw program. I would assume, however, that if you are shelling out $500+ for Photoshop you are probably using a decent camera that utilizes Raw files. The Raw program is an amazing program within Photoshop that lets you make numerous adjustments and corrections to your pictures before they are opened into the basic Photoshop program. It's a fascinating program, and you are missing an awful lot if you are not incorporating it into your photograph work flow.

So for many enthusiasts this definitely cannot be the only book you buy, unless, of course, you find the Adobe manual a sufficient resource for you.

As other reviewers have indicated the tutorials in the book are generally well written, and the author usually tells you the purpose of each step in a process.

I find one other weakness in the book, and that is a lack of an accompanying CD of pictures used in the text. There are about 5 pictures that can be downloaded from the website, but this is a minimal amount. It has always been most useful to me to learn by working on the exact pictures used in the text instructions. This would seem especially useful to those who are new to photoshop. There are several excellent books on the market that include a CD or have downloadable pics - for example, Katrin Eisman's book Photoshop Restoration and Retouching, 3rd edition, has over 100 megabytes of downloadable pics that are used in the text

Not only does the book begin to literally fall apart after a few months of use (pages disengage from the binding), the way the book is written is absolutely atrocious.

The author will explain some procedure (step 1,2,3...) as if that's all you need to know to be able to perform that procedure. However, she consistently leaves out a vital step (that she had apparently explained several hundred pages earlier) assuming that you have read and remembered what she said about that vital step. (no doubt the author is thinking "Dummy! I explained that step on page 97.)

Instead of showing you everything (in detail) you need to know about a specific procedure, she simply states it.

The book is totally worthless. Unfortunately, now I know why they name it CS2 Reference for Dummies. If you buy it, you're a dummy.

The Adobe reference manual that came with CS2 is easier to read and provides a better (albeit brief) understanding of the procedures.

(Photoshop CS2 all-in-one Reference for Dummies is probably the worst book I've ever bought from Amazon.)

Excellent book, great detail with tons of pictures. So much information to take in, I did small lessons with the projects. Amazing what the book reveals about what this program can do. Not difficult to read or follow. After a few hours I was making amazing edits with my pictures.

For me this book finds the right balance. It's not too dry and not 'cute'. It's the book I had been looking for.

This book is big, is on quality paper with color pictures. It seems to cover a little more than other basic books. These are the good things about it. On the other hand is like a texbook: without any task oriented information, it lists the features and then in each and every paragraph would tell you that you can read more in Book xx, chapter xx, without even a page reference. Very diffficult to read. I'm curious if the bookstore would take it back.