Customer Reviews

The Photoshop Elements 7 Book for Digital Photographers

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Clearly, the authors of this book are experts in Photoshop Elements. This book will teach you tricks and techniques you would probably never be able to learn on your own. In addition they give "cookbook" line by line instructions which even a complete novice can follow.
For the most part, the book is organized in a task-oriented manner which is convenient when you have a specific modification you want to make to your photo, i.e. modify colors, restore old faded photos, merge pictures and a thousand other ways to improve your pictures. The authors obviously know their subject well and are enthusiastic about passing on this information.
The task oriented approach does have some disadvantages though. The book does not have chapters meant simply to explain each button, tool, etc in the program, rather you learn about the tools as you use them for a specific task. This is ok, but makes the book difficult to just sit down and read cover to cover in order to learn how to use the program. Rather it works best when you look up a topic one by one when you have a specific task you want to try. This probably works well for most people, but if you buy the book planning on just reading it from start to finish you may be overwhelmed. It would have been nice to have a chapter or two introducing different tools and concepts.
My biggest complaint is the way they handle the layers tool. The authors state that every other book on elements goes through the basics of using layers, so they are going to skip this. Instead, layers are used frequently to achieve many techniques, with step by step cookbook instructions. Since I have not read a previous book (other than a previous edition of this book which takes the same approach), I don't understand the layers toolbar and just copy their step by step instructions (which give amazing results!). Nevertheless, in my opinion, a chapter explaining layers would help me understand layers better-- then I might be able to perform these tasks by myself rather than just memorizing the steps.
I can't comment on whether this book is a good update if you already own their immediate previous edition as I upgraded from a previous edition for Elements 3. The upgrade is clearly worth it to me as there is substantial new information compared with the version for Elements 3.
In summary, this book has an amazing amount of information presented in a step by step fashion easy to reproduce at home. It will teach you both simple and complex techniques to do amazing things with your pictures. I give it 4 stars because it is short at times on explaining concepts, particularly layers, requiring me to keep the book open and follow each step rather than being able to leave the book behind and apply the concepts I learned.

I am VERY new to Photoshop. In fact, I opened the program for the very first time with this book in front of me. I had a specific picture I wanted to brighten the sky on. I found the instructions BUT they were not at all complete. I got as far as highlighting the sky, and then I had no idea how to actually set the function. There was no instructions on simple things like that. And looking through, the verbage really is for more advanced users. Being that I am not highly experienced with my DSLR and not at all experienced with Photoshop, this was not the book for me. So if you need more detailed instructions like I do, go with Adobe Classroom in a Book instead of this one.

I bought "The Missing Manual" by Barbara Brundage after I first got Elements 7. I has been helpful but hard to understand. Yesterday I just received Scott Kelby's "The Photoshop Elements 7" manual and I LOVE it! Colored pictures, easy to understand directions from start til end. I truly recommend this book over Barbara's manual because of it's simplicity and photos. I suggest everyone have it in their library if they have photoshop elements 7! Scott Kelby is an excellent author! I have some of his Digital Photography books and look forward to #3 coming out in August!

Update! January 30, 2010! I just want to update my review on Scott Kelby's Photoshop Elements 7 manual! I have been using it several months now, have edited over 600 portraits and pull his manual out several times! It is seriously the best! I own 2 other books, The Missing Manual and just got Advanced Elements 7 and I have to say that Scott Kelby does a step by step, easy to understand instuctions! Buy it! Even if you own the newer or older Elements, I'm sure this will help! Love it!

Scott Kelby is my favorite photography author. His co-author, Matt Kloskowski, is also a very talented Photoshop professional. Boy, they really know how to write a clear, concise Photoshop Elements user manual for people that are new to the photo software-editing world. I hesitated for my first year with a camera in purchasing any type of editing software due to the fact that it was very intimidating. I'm not an expert with a PC or a camera and thought that the editing tricks and processes would be difficult and confusing. No more. Just skimming through this book answered a lot of questions I had and given me ideas on how to improve my existing photos. Color accent, cloning/erasing objects, layers, shadow effects and a slew of other tips are included in no nonsense, easy to follow advice in this book. I love it. I will post some of my touch-up photos on this book web page as well as my camera's product page. I can't wait! Buy this book. You won't regret it. It will add layers and layers to your photography collection, pardon the pun!

This book contains mostly tips and tricks for those who already know 95% of what there is to be known about using Photoshop Elements 7. There is very little attempt to explain the basics. Furthermore, there is virtually no difference in the books's printed "before" and "after" pictures used for illustration.

I was so dissapointed with this book that I returned it very soon after receiving it from Amazon and reviewing it. It made me appreciate Amazon's great return policy if nothing else.

Great book for beginners. Very helpful, makes Elements 7 easy to learn. Glad I bought this book. You don't have to read the book cover to cover all at once. You can move around the chapters of this book according to what function you are trying to perform. I recommend this book for anyone trying to learn Elements 7.

THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK. I AM A NOVICE AND HAD NO PROBLEM FOLLOWING THE BOOK. IT IS WRITTEN SO THE AVERAGE PERSON CAN UNDERSTAND AND FOLLOW ALL EXPLANATIONS. IF YOU NEED HELP EXPLAINING VARIOUS TECHNIQUES ABOUT ELEMENTS 7 I RECCOMMEND THIS BOOK.

Mr. Kelby is clear and plain-spoken, something I love, and after only one week and many digital photos, I love this book.

I had worked with imaging software a little, and then three years ago bought Elements 4 and just happened to pick Scott Kelby's book for Elements 4.

I knew Elements was a pretty powerful program, but just basically bought Mr. Kelby's Elements 4 book out of sheer good luck.

Three years and thousands of photos later, I upgraded to Elements 7 and also to Mr. Kelby's Elements 7 book.

I have spent the past week using Elements 7's expanded RAW features (when compared to my older Elements 4) and this book rocks more than the earlier version.

I understand that some who are brand new to image manipulation might feel let down a bit, because this book assumes a very basic level of expertise.

If you are brand-new to working with images on your computer, you might buy Elements 7, this Elements 7 version of Mr. Kelby's book, and also an absolute beginners book too. You will soon move from the absolute beginner book to Mr. Kelby's and I promise you'll be glad you bought it.

This is THE book for Elements as far as I'm concerned.

If you use Elements 7 this book is awsome. I am a first time user of Adobe Elements and this book makes life so much easier. I used the program for a month before the book was available and could only navigate the simple tools of the program. Now if I get stumped I just pull out this book and it will get you going in the right direction.

I am a new user to the photoshop element, I looked up the instructions in the book on various topics and find the instructions confusing, have yet to complete any task I'd attempted. So I joined abobe's free basic membership, which come with some online tutorials and find those are much easier to follow.