Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS Bible

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

 

 

This book has a very thorough walkthrough of all of the features of CS. But the majority of the book is in black and white, while competitive books are in full color and a lot shorter. There are two color inserts that show the color versions of what is explained in the rest of the book. The examples are not great either. In particular the filter examples seem to have been picked to show the most dramatic effect of the filter, as opposed to an optimal use of the filter to show it in it's best form. I recommend Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One instead.

I have struggled with Photoshop for years. Now mind you, I'm not a graphics professional, but I need good raster graphics for software and video projects that I produce.

As anyone who has picked up Photoshop can tell you, it's anything but intuitive. Incredibly powerful, but hardly something one can pick up by groping around. I slogged through the Photoshop Classroom In A Book when I tried Photoshop 6, and it was adequate, but not comprehensive enough.

A month ago, I decided to give Photoshop one more try, so I upgraded to Photosohop CS and bought this book. I love both the program and the book. Photosohp is still as unintuitive as ever, but McClelland's book does a nice job of explaining the basics and then providing walk-throughs for most of the tasks one would normally perform in Photoshop.

I put the book to the test compositing a photograph with a dingy gray sky to a shot of a blue sky with white, puffy clouds. The original photograph has large areas of sky showing through trees, and I had never been able to re-sky a picture that complex. Using masking and color range selections, I got the task done in about fifteen minutes flat. Needless to say, I was impressed. I'm beginning to understand why people get hooked on Photoshop.

If you're a novice to intermediate user, or if you are looking for a ready reference for tasks you don't perform very often, then this book is well worth a look. It has earned a prominent place on my bookshelf.

Wonderful exhaustive reference to Photoshop techniques, suffering only from lack of decent images to follow what the author is trying to tell you. The grayscale images on recycled paper convey far too little information for the amount of text covered. The color plates help some, but trying to locate them, in two far-apart locations yet, makes any connection between text and outcome all that more tedious.

Frankly, notwithstanding the disingenuous reasoning of why NOT to provide quality color images (whether on CD or online), it would have been cheaper in the end to include a CD with the book and dispense with the color plates altogether. The lack of see-for-yourself images is particularly troublesome in the promising section on layer blending modes. Deke keeps on talking and talking, but after a while you give up with a bad headache because even the original layer arrangement isn't all that clear. Too bad, really - this would have been one of the most outstanding parts of the book.

The Bible becomes even more confusing when you learn that there's a professional version with exactly the same title (librarians just love that!) -- sort of like an Old and a New Testament. Unfortunately, now that I own both versions, there are indeed some differences (mostly omissions) between the two. Even so, there are huge sections that are almost verbatim repetitions of the Old Testament, other than for the high-quality paper and the on-page color images (yet even here the section on layer blends remains unfulfilling for lack of a CD to learn how the author got there). Worse, the tantalizing in-depth treatment of Adobe's Camera RAW plugin doesn't show up till near the end and, truthfully, isn't that greatly changed from the original (even the tea kettle illustration remains unchanged, other than for the color).

In all truth, McClellands "All-in-One" text that includes a CD and video strips may be not as complete as the Bibles, but you'll learn a lot more, and retain it much better.

All told: the Bible(s) remains the definitive Photoshop reference work, presented in readable style with a nice touch of gentle humor. As it stands, this is a great resource for intermediate to advanced users, and a great buy pound-for-pound, well worth the top five stars. Substituting a CD for the color plates would turn this already bright star into one heck of a super-Nova.

I just had a quick look at my just arrived copy of "PhotoshopCS Bible" and I've got
to say that I'm disappointed.

It IS the Photoshop "CS" Bible and the single and most important change
between CS and Photoshop 7 is the Camera RAW converter. Well don't expect
much from this thousand page book if you are looking for Camera RAW
information.

The author Deke McClelland, starts off the skimpy Camera RAW section - and it
takes until page 942 to get there - with a disclaimer that "The Camera RAW
dialog box is a professional-level tool, which is why I cover it in obsessive detail
in the Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition."

How nice. It's a 1000+ page book, but it isn't "professional", and being a
peasant, I don't get the benefit of the "obsessive detail" that I thought I was
buying. He does cover "the basic stuff" but that "ain't what I paid for".

What this book seems to be, is a cheap and dirty revision to McClelland's
Photoshop 7 "Bible", and that's why I'm sending my copy back. If what
McClelland says is true, I'll just wait for someone to write a book specifically on
Camera RAW, and it won't be him.

Now the rest of the book may be great. But if you have a previous edition you'd
be well served to save your money.

Honestly, I was somewhat disappointed with McClelland's Photoshop CS Bible. In the Preface he mentions another version titled "Photoshop CS Bible, Professional Edition" which I don't think really exists. If it did maybe I would have been less disappointed. I have been using various versions of Photoshop for over 6 years and have bought many Photoshop how-to books for most of the versions. I hadn't gotten around to getting a book for Photoshop CS until now. What I was looking for was a very detailed book getting into the changes made for version CS and especially getting into the details of the automated and batch functions.

Unfortunately this book barely touched on the specific new areas of Photoshop that I wanted to learn about, despite having over 1000 pages! I also noticed that there are only about 16 actual color pages in the whole book. For those just learning how to use Photoshop, this lack of color examples could be a real drawback.

This book is really a bible covering everything about Photoshop CS. All what you need to know. I have two issues about this book: it is not tailored to a certain provision such as graphics designers, photographers and so on. The second is the lack of proper classifications, for example: file formatting is explained in full details, but not mentioned in the Table of Contents. Nevertheless it is a great book for those consider themselves serious Photoshop users. Looking forward to see CS2 version of the book.

If you can't find the answer in this book, chances are you'll have to find another way around the problem! This is a great reference book.

Who are we, mere mortals, to make easy criticism with the great achievement of the Master himself?

THE Bible is THE bible of photoshop, and lives up to its name, after setting the standard for photoshop related literature. It's the king of books of the king of programs, version after version, book after book.

It does have its flaws, sure, as Michael Jordan had his, as MichaelAngelo's David may have them, after centuries of being under the magnifying glass of the most avid experts.

It is OK to search new horizons, such as Scott Kelby's work, practical, step-by-step structured for we beginners and amateurs. But THE BIBLE is the book of photoshop to have at home if you could only have one, the industry benchmark for years, one of that books about something that achieve a place by themselfs and go way beyond the category of tutorials.

In my opinion, a book maybe not to be bought with every change of photoshop, but maybe every two upgrades or the program or so. A writing style and approach to teaching which has produced the best material (if the books are good, try the dvds series etc)about photoshop and illustrator.

Do not dare to say the name of the Great Deke in vain!!!!!!