Customer Reviews

The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers

5 star:		(66)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Love this book. It has the answers to most of the problems you have with digital photography that you want to fix. Things like something else being in the picture that isn't supposed to be there and taking away flaws in the skin. It gives you the simple way to do these things. I've only had it for 2 days and I've already learned a couple of things I'll use over and over. It even tells you the setting that you need to use as defaults on Elements. The other book I bought with this one "Photoshop Elements 6 the missing manual" is good also but it's so huge. This one goes into more detail on do this and do that. Love it!

I found the Photoshop Elements x Book for Digital Photographers series of books back with Elements 2 and have purchased a copy of every version since as I've upgraded the software (why can't there be an upgrade price for the hard-copy book too). Scott Kelby and now Mat Kloskowski provide usable techniques that can be applied immediately by anyone with great results.

I also purchased the Missing Manual books for a couple of versions and while I've been satisfied, I notice that when I need some help to correct a photograph, it is to the Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers that I turn. In fact, I would rate the book as five stars, if it was the first version that I purchased. I do find sufficient value to purchase the new editions, but do find it is an incremental value and that the previous edition does cover the majority of the tools that you'd need, so a little less bang for the buck than if this were the only addition that I purchased, hence I've docked it one star for a 4-star rating.

The V6 edition adds significantly to the coverage of editing using the RAW editor and provides additional detail on the use of the new sharpening capabilities. The other major difference I've noticed is they've dropped from the hard-copy the chapter on Photo Restoration Techniques that was present in previous editions. They then make it available in .pdf format online as Chapter 14 in a free download.

I know some people have found the style a bit wearing at times, but it doesn't disturb me at all and the content more than makes up for the sometimes silly attempts at humor.

Over-all great book. If you only purchase one book for use with Photoshop Elements 6, make this that book and you'll be glad you did.
Bill Olsen
Las Vegas, NV

Before ordering this book I contacted the publisher to see if it was applicable to the just released version of Photoshop Elements 6 for the Mac, as all of the previous books for earlier versions of Elements were PC only. I was informed that sadly it was only for PC's.

Well I ignored the publishers advice and purchased it anyway. And much to my surprise it is for Mac & PC (the first book by this author for both versions of the software). This is not widely advertised and it should be. In addition to references in the book about ways to do both PC and Mac steps, there is an excellent website that accompanies the book. Here you can download all of the photos referenced so that you can actually make the same adjustments on the identical photos shown in the book. There is also a completely re-written chapter 1 for the Mac in PDF that can be downloaded (Macs use Adobe Bridge for downloading and sorting photos - the same as the full version of Photoshop and the printed version of the book does not note this).

As for the book, it is excellent. I have used Photoshop 7 (Mac) which unfortunately does NOT run on the latest version of Mac OSX 10.5, so I needed something to replace it. Adobe wanted a small fortune to upgrade my older version of Photoshop (which for me was somewhat of an overkill product anyway). So I purchased Photoshop Elements 6, but needed a good "how to" book to supplement the PDF manual that came with the software. This book is perfect. It skips all of the stuff that is in the manual and goes right to showing you step by step how to do the things you need to do to get your photos perfectly tuned. It provides some advice on proper workflow (which can be quite different for each individual). But most of all it shows you how to correct things like skin tones, blemishes, color balance, etc..

This book compliments perfectly the PDF manual that came with the software (showing what each individual menu item does), and provides a nice self guided way to learn the many, many ways that this complex program can bring out the perfect photo.

Highly recommended...

Eric

On page xv of this book the authors describe my major beef with it when they say, "I tried not to put things in this book that are already in ever other Elements book out there". While the content of the book is really very good, it leaves a lot out. If you are new to Photoshop of any variety, this book is not for you. It is a collection of individual "recipes" for making various corrections and adjustments. I am not new to Photoshop so they all make sense to me, but it still would have been good to have Chapter 1 be a crash course in the basics.

A must have if you use PSE6. I have Scott's "The Digital Photography Book" volumes 1 and 2 and they are great; but don't compare with his latest book! My first impression when it arrived was 'WOW it's BIG!" 8x10 and about 1" thick with 473 pages. Every page has easy to understand step by step instructions with several screen shots and a "before and after" at the end. Well written, beautiful quality graphics and worth every penny.

The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
Scott Kelby & Matt Kloskowski take you by the hand and step by step teach you to get the most out of your photos---I can't believe the things I can do with photos nor can my friends who are now sending me their photos for all sorts of corrections. Buy Element 6 & this book to get off to a fast start---no technical background needed---it is written for amateur photographers who have never retouched photos.

Scott Kelby's books, this one included, are the essential conpanion to PS Elements. He shows you how to use all of Elements features and work arounds to accomplish some tasks only available in the big brother version of Photoshop CS. This book is a "how to", not a "theory of" book. Kelby tells you what settings to use for specific tasks, then encourages you to explore further. I have used PS Elements from PSE 1 thru the current PSE 6, so I am very familure with Elements, but I keep Kelby's book handy to help me do new things. I shoot almost exclusively in "RAW", and this book walks you thru each step in processing your images. DON'T TAKE ANOTHER PICTURE WITHOUT THIS BOOK!

I have previously purchased Scott Kelby's books on Photoshop CS and Elements 5 for Digital Photographers. Both books are very well done and easy to follow. However, I just recently purchased Elements 6 plus Scott's book on Elements 6, and am very disapointed to see that the example windows shown in the book are grey background with white text just like what you see on your monitor, but they are much smaller and it is impossible to read the text without a magnifying glass. Areas where you are supposed to click on the windows are circled in red, but you can't read the text to see what you are clicking on. Using this grey background with white text is a stupid blunder by Adobe, not everyone using these programs has 20/20 vision and a large monitor like the geeks designing the system. We gave the Photoshop Elements 6 program and Scott's book to a young friend of ours who has much better vision than I do. She has since commented that it is difficult for her to see also since she has a laptop computer, but she will try to get used to it. I will not buy any further Adobe products that use this grey and white bit.

I used to be a PC user and have loved Elements since version 3 and Kelty's books on it's usage. I recently switched to a MAC for numerous reasons and purchased Elements 6 when it came out. I have purchased several books for MAC on its use but none where as good as the PC versions by Kelty. I wrote to his site only to be told that they did not have anything for the MAC and was disappointed. I happened to be in the mood to just try the book as I found that a lot of what was in his PC version 5 book I was able to relate to the MAC operations, so why not give his latest one a try. Once I got the book and started reading it it didn't take long before it told me that the book was for both operating systems...hooray!!!! thanks, Kelty and I love the step-by-step process and pics to get me thru a process...everyone BUY this book

This book does a great job of walking you through how to deal with many common problems and fixes. However, at several points in the book I felt like the author was assuming I knew certain things about previous versions of Elements. The sections on Layering are particularly confusing if you've never worked with layers before.