Customer Reviews

Photoshop 7 Artistry (Voices (New Riders))

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Photoshop has become the image editor of choice for most graphic designers, photographers, and other creative professionals, but its vast array of capabilities, commands, options, and choices can make it an intimidating software tool to master, especially for the beginner. After purchasing and working my way through most of the popular Photoshop instruction books, I believe that Photoshop 7 Artistry: Mastering The Digital Image, by Barry Haynes and Wendy Crumpler, is hands-down the best available.

Rather than focusing on drop shadows, bevelled edges, chrome effects and other "Wow" and "Gee Whiz" Photoshop features (although these techniques are also well explained), Haynes and Crumpler provide a logical, complete, and in-depth process for creating a "master image" file that can be used for producing superb digital prints, web-site graphics, and other image applications. Each chapter is packed with detailed information, and more screen displays than I've ever seen in a Photoshop book. The examples are well chosen and the reader can load the tutorial files from the CD that comes with the book and gain hands-on practice while studying each chapter. The authors also provide an in-depth evaluation of many of the state-of-the-art hardware/software capabilities for scanning, color calibration, and digital printing. Barry Haynes' photographic background allows him to clearly explain techniques such as the Zone System and color correction.

You'll learn something new each time you open this outstanding
book. It's a "must buy" for aspiring Photoshop artists!

If you are buying one book to learn Photoshop 7 (or version 6), this is probably your best bet. Learning Photoshop is similar to learning Economics -- you must learn a number of different topics and bring all of that knowledge together in your mind to understand the subject. This is a great book to help you bring together the essential topics and it covers a wide range of interesting and useful areas.

Here are the main reasons this is the best book I have seen on learning Photoshop:

-Conceptually, the authors have clearly thought through what is essential about learning Photoshop and have indicated which chapters focus on the essential material.

-The authors have substantial experience teaching and writing about Photoshop and this experience comes through in the clarity of the writing and examples

-The book is big (just over 450 pages), it is full color and every page is densely packed with valuable information that is easy to read, understand and absorb. Most other books on Photoshop are either filled with fluff, filled with white space or short.

-The examples are well designed and available on the included CD ROM

-This book is useful to the photographer, too. There is even a chapter on digital photography and the Zone System.

-I have found the index useful and the book has helped me quickly resolve questions that I could not answer with other books.

The table of contents is available here on amazon.com (go to "look inside this book!" and select the introductory pages) and will give you a pretty good idea of the scope of this book. The material available will also help you get a feel for the authors' writing style.

If you find this book intimidating, I suggest you look at books by Scott Kelby such as "Photoshop X Photo-Retouching Secrets."

Kelby is easy to read, gives good instructions, is easy to understand and really knows what he is talking about (you would be surprised how many Photoshop authors give bad advice which causes degradation of files, for example. Kelby understands the product deeply enough to avoid doing this and to give you good, simple ways to deal with images).

My two complaints about Kelby may be his best charms for some readers. First, his books have a lot less content than they might, but the extra white space may make the books more approachable for some readers. Second, he injects a bit too much humor into some of his books. But, as I said, many users may value these "features."

Other books on Photoshop worth considering:

"Real World Adobe Photoshop X" by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser
"The Photoshop X Wow! Book" by Linnea Dayton and Jack Davis
"Adobe Photoshop Master Class" by John Paul Caponigro

As a digital photographer I am always looking for ways to improve my photos after I get them out of the camera. As a rule I have been disappointed with many of the current batch of Photoshop titles. I don't have time to filter through pages of [weak] puns or endless tutorials that either have no real point or make something that useless (one book showed how to make a red rose into a blue one - when was the last time you wanted to do that?). With that prejudice in mind, I skimmed through PS 7 Artistry, then sat down and read it and now I am using it like a cookbook when I work. It is sitting next to my computer and has become part of my library of essential Photoshop books (all 4 of them). I also love the fact the book is all in color (really great color too)on good paper so I can see and not just read what they are explaining. If you work with photographs using Photoshop 7 and you don't have this book, stop what you are doing, buy the book and (here is the secret) sit down and read it. Your creative juices will start flowing and your photo editing will be noticably improved.

The big question here is, How can a book get so good? It requires something on the scale of the grand alignment of the planets. Haynes and Crumpler have without a doubt mastered Photoshop. They have spent years honing their teaching skills. They are both excellent writers. They have the rare discipline to go the extra step when assembling information. This is the fifth edition of their book, and it is obvious that they listen to their readers. If you thumb through the book, you will be amazed at how densely packed every page is (I've seldom seen such narrow margins). This is not clutter. Each page stands as a miracle of organization. The text and diagrams complement each other to near perfection. This is the book that should come with Photoshop. Adobe should toss their embarrassingly deficient user manual and pack this tome in each box.

I was already a fan of Haynes and Crumpler's previous work and Photoshop 7 Artistry does it again. It's hard to cram 39 chapters into 466 pages - and make it interesting, useful and inspiring, but they did it. Lots of books will tell you what the original manual should have. This one goes step by step in exercises that help you grasp the concept and apply it to an image for practice. The basics for new comers are all there (set up, preferences, color calibration, layers and actions.... plus much more) and they are followed by exercises. Advanced Color Correction, Restoration Techniques, Compositing Multiple Images and Layer Masks, Filters, Effects, The Web and Multimedia..... are all given time in this colorful book.

New Riders does it again with Photoshop 7 Artistry. The Authors Barry Haynes, Wendy Crumpler and Sean Duggan have comprised a comprehensive list of Photoshop lessons which provide the user with the know how to master almost any digital project. This book is a treasure trove of practical information, tips, tools and techniques sure to kick your Photoshop skills up a notch... or even two!

The book begins with a comprehensive in depth overview of Photoshop with chapters such as, Navigation, System set-up and Preferences, Picking and using Color, File Formats and Image Compression right down to Color Calibration and Management. They are thorough and skillfully written, so much so that the novice can understand them.

Throughout the book you'll be guided through practical examples of how to create the highest quality digital image by the use of color correction, layers, photo restoration, filters, paint and composition, all aided by an accompanying CD. Section two is reason enough to pick this book up, if not only for the photographic, color, printer, scanner and monitor calibration lessons alone.

The Photoshop expert will not only find this an unsurpassable resource but a guide as well to creating that perfect digital image.

Above all, this is a must have book for any Photoshop artist... budding or not.

As a photographer, I've been looking for THE book about Photoshop for several years now. I've purchased and read several (some with CD tutorials) and this is what I've been waiting for.

I learned photography in the darkroom, using Ansel Adam's zone system so I was thrilled to find a book that finally explained how my "old school" background translates into the new technology.

I'm currently working through the tutorials and am extremely pleased with what I'm learning. The other day, I was talking with a friend who started using Photoshop long before I made the conversion. I'd always considered him to be my PS guru. I mentioned some tricks I'd picked up while doing the tutorials and realized I now knew more than he did about many aspects of the program.

Steve Sweitzer
Past President of the National Press Photographers Association.

This book is densely packed with detail. Almost every inch of every page is filled with text and screenshots. This makes it very difficult to read. Many of the screenshots are so small, you'll need a magnifying glass to see the details.

That being said, there is a lot of good information in here. And almost every image is beautiful, full color. The CD contains all the files you'll need to follow along with the examples in the book plus a bunch of useful actions, filters, etc.

This is a book for intermediate or advanced Photoshop users. Beginners will be overwhelmed.

This is a comprehensive guide to the use of Photoshop for the production of photo art. It covers clearly just about everything you need to know to turn your scanned or digital pictures into publishable images on paper. I've followed this series since Photoshop 5 Artistry and it continues to be an extremely valuable reference and tutorial for me. There's a lot of material here and it can be intimidating but I guarantee that you'll be an accomplished Photoshop user if you follow the advice and techniques from this book.

I would also recommend as a complementary book Scott Kelby's 'The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers'.

This book is amazing. It is written for and by a photographer. I've had the book for only a few days and I am already doing things that seemed complex in just a matter of moments. I can't express how happy I am with this book purchase. It was the perfect book for me and anyone else that wants to work with digital photographs.