Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS3/CS4 Wow! Book, The (8th Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When the second edition of PS WOW! came out I simply couldn't wait to drool all over the amazing work inside, and spent hours honing my skills late into the night. I wore out my early editions from heavy usage. Now the long awaited WOW! CS3/CS4 Book is everything we as designers (and students, teachers, computer geeks and people drawn to shiny objects) have come to expect. From the beginning of the book to the end there are many tricks, step-by-step demonstrations, and great explanations of both difficult and easy concepts.

The predecessor to this volume has been used heavily in classrooms all over the world and in several languages, and this one should see just as much use as it's simply the premiere book in its class. Dayton and Gillespie have carefully sorted through each exercise as well as writing a lot of new material to make sure the updates of Adobe's developers have all been perfectly covered.

The WOW! book doesn't just tell you how to make Layers; it gives you multitudes of ways to leverage them. It doesn't simply talk about type; it provides tricks and tips used by the best designers in the world to get the most out of the powerful tools PS offers. Channels, Brushes, Groups, 3D, Styles, Actions, Video and far more things than any one Photoshop user ever will get into are covered in great detail. Chances are that if it's a trick that's not here you'll have trouble getting your hands in greater detail anywhere.

For those who are concerned about the lack of CS5 materials in the book, and it's a valid concern, nothing in the book is now outdated other than some of the screen shots of the tool palette. Everything that is in CS3/4 is also in CS5, so the material is completely relevant. The most interesting new items for most users are some selection and editing tools, and some of the more artistic users will get excited about some of the artistic brushwork that is now possible. Those are all well explained within the application itself, and while they are kind of neat the lack of those few items shouldn't make anyone feel less inclined towards this edition.

After all... there's -nothing- else like The Photoshop CS3/CS4 WOW! Book in existence.

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And for the three-star and one-star reviewers, one of whom merely noted CS5 was out but didn't actually look at this book before his "review," I don't think I could be convinced to disagree with your assessment more than I already do. Perhaps I'm not understanding your concern, but the WOW! series has never been strictly for beginners, it has hundreds of pages of meticulous step-by-step instruction and nothing about CS5 makes this book incorrect about a single method. I just don't get your reviews at all - they're like you put the review on the wrong book's page!

The second I opened it I understood why it was called the WOW book. It's the most information packed publication on Adobe's Photoshop that I have seen. My first reaction was "Yikes! Information overload." Once I calmed down and took a closer look at how the sections were structured, working through it became much easier than I originally thought.

I found the whole book valuable on many levels. The first four chapters of the book are devoted to Photoshop basics and start out with how Photoshop thinks. Although I thought I was past the beginner stage, I learned quite a bit there. There are both "Quick" sections which are short and informative and "Find Out More" boxes that lead to extensive information. When I stayed focused on a section, I was able to study in depth. Other times I would jump from one topic to the next and end up far from the original subject but that was fun too. It was very similar to surfing the web. When actually working on my photos it was easy to skip around to find exactly what I needed.

The tutorial files were clearly written and easy to apply to my own work and there are lots of full color images and shots of Photoshop tool panels which are great for visual learners. The companion DVD that comes with the book not only contains lesson files but also a wealth of goodies like presets, actions, patterns and textures. That in itself was worth the price of the book.

Whether you want to learn Photoshop in depth or just have a great reference book to grab when you need help, I highly recommend the Photoshop CS3/CS4WOW Book.

First, a confession. I am not a photographer, I'm an artist who specializes in the human figure and in inked illustrations. So my remarks may not apply to digital photographers, although I do use digital photographs as reference and source material.

I am very impressed with this book. I wish that I had bought this book before I bought my other Photoshop books. There are detailed explanations of a huge variety of Photoshop techniques and the Actions included on the DVD are very educational. If I could only own one Photoshop book, this would be the one.

The Photoshop WOW! Book comes with a DVD-ROM and packs in hundreds of tutorial files, gradients, custom tools and more, providing a strong accompaniment to the latest Photoshop CS3, CS4 and CS5 developments. It reviews all the new and improved features, covers all the basics of building skills with familiar Photoshop features, and teaches how to create amazing special effects. If only one Photoshop 'bible' were to be included in a lending library, this should be a top pick!

This is a must-have for any Photoshop artist - It is a large book (read the product details) and extremely informative. If there was one Photoshop book I could only own, this would be it. And by the way, all of the WOW! books are phenomenal (I'm referring to the WOW!, not the How to Wow - some of those are good, too, though).

This WOW Book for Photoshop is just what I needed to cover the capabilities of Photoshop in a nice concise manner. It is well organized and chock full of illustrations to complement the text. I teach Photoshop and use this book to enhance the Lesson Plans and explain things that the Classroom In A Book series just can't touch on.

Have purchase many on-line tutorials and also reviewed many Free tutorials from the Internet, and this is the BEST purchase so far!!! Very detailed, easy to follow, and made my new venture into Photography so much easier! I do use this along with other things I have purchased, however, feel this Book was well worth the $'s. A great reference and has many extras as well...YOU WILL LOVE IT!

By all means, this is a book any Photoshop user should own!
Very illustrative and fun. You get to know all aspects of Photoshop very thoroughly, as you get very detailed information about it. Besides, all the graphics are actually showing something about the information you are reading on each page.
You can find exercises, cross links and references, tips and tricks and everything you'd expect on a good, illustrative and fun book!
Also, there is a DVD containing all the files needed to recreate all the exercises in the book.

I've been using PS since 3.5, and think the "Wow" books are great. They offer a real boost to creativity. However, I do think the publishers were a bit disingenuous on the cover. Saying it also works with CS5, leads one to believe it also covers new features found only in CS5. It doesn't. I don't even think CS5 is mentioned anywhere, except on the front and back covers . This is dishonest to say the least. I guess those who defend this would be just fine, if when CS6 is released, the publisher just added another blurb to the cover "Works with CS6". In fact, they could keep doing this through numerous future versions, for as long as dummies (myself included) keep buying it. If it had said, "Works with CS5, but doesn't cover any of the new features", I wouldn't have purchased it.

At the very least, the publisher should offer a deep discount, or free upgrade when they release a "Wow Book" that truly covers CS5, for those of us that were fooled by the misleading cover. I must say, I'm really disappointed in the publisher.

I have updated my review to reflect the fact that this was a misleading act by the publisher, and not the authors. I subtracted 2 stars for being misleading.

Wow is right. The authors have packed so much info into this book. I feel like I could spend days pouring through the pages and get something new every time.