Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS5: Essential Skills

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If you are interested in mastering digital imaging, the best way to hone your skills is not by picking up a few hints here and there on the Internet, but rather by having a book in hand and a tutorial DVD that will help you with digital basics. Before you purchase this book you'll need the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to be able to read the PDF content and QuickTime 7 version or later in order to watch the movie tutorials. There are links to these resources on the DVD if you haven't already updated. Most people like to know what they are getting for their money so I'll try to be as detailed as I can in explaining what you'll get on the DVD as you cannot skim that if you pick up a copy in a bookstore. If you are confident PhotoshopCS5 is what you'll need, you simply can scan this review or bypass it completely.

What is on the DVD:

FOUNDATION MODULE

Digital Basics (DVD Chapter)

Channels palette

RGB* (Red, Green, Blue)

CMY* (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow)

HSB (Hue Saturation Brightness)

Perception

Titles of movie tutorials include Refine Edge, Mixer Brush, Content Aware Fill, Puppet Warp, Merge to HDR Pro, Repousse, ACR6, 3D Images, 3D, Foundation-l a.dng, Foundation-l b dng, Foundation-l c.dng, Project-l.mov, Foundation-2.dng*, Foundation-3.dng*, Vibrance.dng*, Foundation-4.dng*, Spot-l.dng*, and Spot-2.dng*. You can test print in JPEG or TIFF and your record sheets are available in JPEG OR PSD. Instructions are given for the PC or MAC.

* Note: Raw images cannot be displayed on some browser interfaces. Some of the movies take a while to load so you will need to be patient or press on the spacebar to load if they don't play automatically.

ADVANCE SKILLS MODULE

Layers and Channels

Titles of movie tutorials include Intro.mov, layers & channels.mov, layers masks.mov, Selections1 mov, Selections2.mov, and Selections3.mov.

You will then have an opportunity to work with several layer blends (opacity, darken, multiply, screen, lighten, overlay, difference, soft light, luminosity, and saturation).

Filters

You will be able to work with several pictures and will have one movie tutorial. Vanishing-Point.psd

RETOUCHING

There are seven movie tutorials and ten digital images to work with (TIFF or PSD format)

MONTAGE

There are seven movie tutorials and fifteen digital images to work with (a mix of TIFF, PSD, Raw)

ADVANCED RETOUCHING

There are eleven movie tutorials and nineteen digital images to work with ( a mix of TIFF, PSD, Raw, JPEG)

ALIGN AND BLEND

There are six movie tutorials and twenty-one digital images to work with (a mix of TIFF, PSD, Raw)

RESOURCES

In this section we can find Author Info, Free Skies (stock skies), QuickTime, Actions, Luminance Preset (Black and White), Essentials Skills, A Digital Basics Chapter, a Digital Darkroom Chapter, Focal Press, Adobe, a Shortcuts Printout, and RMIT University (Mark Galer is affiliated with this University).

USEFUL LINKS

* Essential Skills

* RMIT Photography

* Adobe Digital Imaging

* Deke

* Adobe TV

* Russell Brown

* PhotoshopSupport.com

* Image Science (Printing services)

* digital photography review

* PhotoshopNews.com

* John Nack

* Luminous Landscape

* Digital Dog (Andrew Rodney)

* Studio Exchange (Photoshop)

* Planet Photoshop

* Adobe Evangelist

* Retouch Pro

All of the links provided are current and provide many additional tips and techniques that the reader will find to be quite useful. The book and DVD are designed so you can take advantage of some of the best information out there at no additional cost. When they mention "Extensive Support" in the book, it is no exaggeration.

The book itself provides a step-by-step visual tutorial that provides a "structured learning approach" to learning Photoshop. You will learn about Photoshop revisions, the CS5 version of Bridge, workflow, raw processing, digital printing, digital basics (DVD, chapter 1), and digital darkroom (DVD, chapter 2). For the more advanced reader there are chapters on layers and channels, selections, filters, and layer blends. There is an imaging projects module that includes retouching projects, montage projects, advanced retouching, and a section on how to align and blend projects.

Each section provides general guidelines, thorough instructions, and is extremely generous with photographic illustrations. In the back of the book is a thorough index, a glossary, a list of keyboard shortcuts, and several recommended web links to explore (tutorials, illustrators, information and blogs).

If you want to acquire a thorough grounding in Photoshop skills, this is the book to buy. You can "hone your image editing skills" without having to pay big $ for a course or spend hours trying to glean bits of information from the Internet. You will obviously need to work hard learning these skills, but I think you'll be quite satisfied with yourself as you progress. I'd say that all things considered, the thorough tutorials provided in this book and on the DVD will be well worth the monies spent with this reference/tutorial.

Galer and Andrews' book promises "essential skills" in the subtitle. I bought this book hoping that I could get a real foundation in all of the new features of CS5, since I was several generations of CS behind. Instead, I found very short coverage of many of the tools, with some skipped entirely. They spend about half of the book going over what I consider rather advanced skills in their "Projects". I am sure that these exercises are useful for the advanced user, but they were not what I was looking for.

I purchased this book primarily for the 12 hours of videos that are advertised as accompanying the book.

1) The videos I have viewed so far feature Photoshop CS3 although the DVD is entitled "Photoshop CS5 Essential Skills" Many of the menus and functions featured are different or unavailable in Photoshop CS5. Very disappointing, much of the information presented in the videos is completely outdated.

2) The DVD is also defective, can't play several of the videos. Tried the DVD on 4 PCs with no luck.

3) Screen images in the book are also from CS3, for example, the filter menu shows an Extract Filter. CS5 has no such menu option!

Returning this book.

Photographers will especially like this book since many of the tips are oriented toward photo retouching and manipulation, rather than for the canvas artist. I like it that the book goes beyond using the photoshop application - for example there is an excellent section on calibrating the monitor and printer color profile. In another example the Extracting Hair Project advises: "Your number one essential step for success is to first shoot your model against a featureless background that is either very dark or very light. The background must be sufficiently illuminated so that it is captured as white rather than gray or the light must be shielded from a dark backdrop so that it records as black. This important aspect of the initial image capture ensures that the resulting hair transplant is seamless and undetectable." I've been using Photoshop on occasion since the very first version 3 was released for Windows, but I've always had a short attention span to go through the lengthy Photoshop books so I relied on trial & error until now. This book contains a lot of the most interesting essential projects broken into concise tutorials and I feel like I'm gaining useful info without getting lost as happens to me in some of the other more abstract books that tend to focus more on the theory. This one is practical oriented and contains a lot of beautiful example screenshots to guide the way.

If you're new to Photoshop, this book will help you get up to speed pretty quickly. And if you're an old hand, you'll find helpful info here, especially if you're a photographer who has never shot in RAW. CS4 made good advances in RAW, but with CS5 you can do a heck of a lot of photo editing in Bridge. I didn't know that. I do know.

I've had this book for a little over a month now. I worked halfway through it, went back to the beginning and started again. I'm getting very competent in Photoshop. And my camera work is getting better too. I'm ashamed to say, that until I got this book, I never gave a thought to white balance. Didn't have that problem with film and I guess I was still thinking like I was shooting with a film camera. Now, I think about it a lot, shoot in RAW, so I can correct it if I don't have it set right.

Used with the accompanying DVD one can't help but advance their Photoshop skills. There is so much to the program, so much you can do with a photo. This book will help bring out the artist in you, well, it's bringing it out in me. This is the most straightforward and easiest to understand Photoshop book that I've come across. If you're a beginner or advanced amateur, this is a good book for you. I can't recommend it highly enough.

This is a book that guides you through Adobe Photoshop CS5, a program that needs lots of explaining, in my view. The book is logical, thorough, and well written. I recommend it for anyone who wants to use this program to get more out of their digital photographs. It is written at the level of an advanced amateur. If you don't understand the basics about photo software, this is not a book for you, nor is CS5 the best program. I recommend that you learn to use a beginner level program like Photoshop Elements, before you upgrade to CS5. The basic program may have everything you need, so you can save yourself a lot of money.

The simple act of choosing a photo editing program, even if you settle on Adobe, can be overwhelming. A visit to the Adobe website reveals lots of expensive choices. CS5 will set you back by over $1000 if you buy it alone. It makes more sense to buy Photoshop Elements, the entry level product. After learning how to use Elements, if you want a program with more capabilities, buy an upgrade to CS5 for about $140. Get this book along with it, and you will be able to perform advanced photo editing.

If you already have a copy of CS5, Essential Skills will teach you how to use it in a fairly concise and understandable fashion. It is an attractive book with lots of the high quality graphics and photos that Elsevier Press is known for. I recommend it to all CS5 users. It includes a dvd with instructional videos and sample pictures that you can practice on.

The format of this book is outrageous, I wish I opened it sooner. There are more image examples than text on many of the pages, with a LOT of Before & After, and the steps in between. For starters, the "What's New" chapter (#1) is best I've seen. It's not a bulleted list of new CS5 features, thankfully! Each new feature is explained WITH Before & After images of what the new feature can actually do in the real world! How the author got the leather look on Text with Puppet Warp is amazing, probably worth the book price right there. Folks, seriously, there are innumerous QUALITY images and examples loaded in this book, with just enough text to support each task being shown. Here I'm all excited about what I've seen and I haven't even gotten out of Chapter 1 in this review.

Chapter 3 is also worth its weight in gold. It's all about teaching a good WORKFLOW, from card to printer. That is so important, and always the most overlooked thing. We learn some Photoshop and then start working blindly, only to have to learn a good workflow later and clean up months of file bloat. Make yourself go through Chapter 3 diligently and you'll never regret it.

One of the other HUGE strengths in this book is SELECTIONS. From selecting hair to replacing a background and making it look REAL, I'm thrilled with how it's taught here! And I've always wanted to know how to put an object into an image and add the proper shadowing and light to make it look original. Look no further, this is the best book I've seen yet on that subject. Oh, and the Layer Blend chapter, ANOTHER great one. Each blend is demonstrated to show what it does and explained WHEN to use it. I've actually seen other books that say "just use these four to darken or lighten", or you just get a tutorial in a bulleted list that says "apply this blend here", and you have no idea why that why that was picked or how they knew to even use it. That drives me nuts, so this blend chapter was a joy to see.

I could keep going, sorry it's even this long, but this is a great way to get advanced in your Photoshop skills. There's an included DVD with the images used in the book so you can do the same work on them, plus it has HOURS of tutorials, haven't even got to watch those yet. I did rave about a few other Photoshop books and they are great for what they offer, but if you want to hit a seriously high level of knowing this crazy tool we call Photoshop, get this book and get it quick. I'll defintely be using this to prepare for the Photoshop CS5 ACE certification exam.

Its is a very good book for starters to photoshop and also can help the more advanced. I always get Photoshop books with examples that are on a disk that you work with Photoshop works with graphics so it is good to have a verity of examples at hand this is one of the better books that I have used for photoshop it never talks down to a user or use complex terminology that they explain the writer is very good at taking a complex program and making it assessable for a very wide range a users its not often that you get a book that's not just a manual that just explains the program this book does that and teaches you how to apply it in everyday uses a very well arranged and thought out and the video and pictures to work on it well laid out in chapters like a book it all comes together to make a very well rounded learning experance.

Hi !

Bravo for this book.

I have been buying dozen of books since (and before) Photoshop exist, and i stoped a few years ago cause in every book about the subject of Photoshop, i often found texts, and images (same pictures used for many years) and finaly, there is not much of new stuff in the book with really tips or even suggestions or new vision to inspire me.

Like i said i am doing images manipulation since 1985, and this book taste fresh for me, and with the DVD it is really well done. Before this book, the only author i consider

was David Blatner (died).

Thanks

Sorry for my bad english i am french Canadian (Québecoise).

Sylvia

I find this book very helpful in learning the workings of Photoshop CS5. I am doing a course and needed home help, it's in this book.