Customer Reviews

Photoshop Elements 4 For Dummies (For Dummies (Computers))

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a decent enough intro to Photoshop Elements 4. It doesn't cover a great deal more information than what's in the manual, but things are presented in more detail, with more examples, so it's useful. The color illustrations are helpful.

If you use a Mac: this book is written strictly for the Windows version, so you have to ignore a small amount of Windows-specific material, but most of the functions and menus are identical in both versions.

Oddly, in the intro, the authors say Elements 4 is NOT available for the Mac. That's funny, because I've had my Mac version for almost a year, and this book was published in 2006, though obviously written earlier. The authors then helpfully suggest you buy a Windows PC in order to run Elements! Dream on ...

My husband and I are taking a beginning Photoshop class at the local adult school. Instead of a more extensive and difficult text we chose to supplement the class with Photoshop Elements 4 For Dummies. It moves in more logical sequence than the class and enabled us to begin editing our photos immediately. It also allowed us to focus on class instruction without taking notes.

The "...For Dummies" is a great series. I have used these books for a number of subjects. The Photoshop Elements series has been especially helpful. Although the Elements series by Photoshop is not as complicated and intricate as the Photoshop 7,8 and CS it has many operations that really allow this amatuer to produce some startling results.

Great companion book to your Photoshop Elements. Between the two books I feel I have all I need to know.
Simple explanations makes it definitely dummy-friendly. Easy index makes it simple to look up whatever you have in mind at the moment.

Thee seems to be a trend in software that they have to keep comming up with new releases to get people to send in more money. But after version three or four, it seems that the new features that they are adding aren't really features that you'd use. Look at Microsoft Word, which of the new features do you really use? But also look at WordPad. It's grown until it's about the equivalent of Word 3.0 or something like that. It's faster, smaller, easier to use and pretty much does what you want, in some cases even better than Word itself.

Photoshop Elements is kind of the same way. It was once a consumer grade, junior version of Photoshop. But it's now in it's fourth edition. It still doesn't have some of the features found in the full scale Photoshop, but would you use those features? And remember Photoshop Elements is $45 on Amazon, full blown Photoshop is $578.

This book describes what you can do with Photoshop Elements. It's one of the new full color 'For Dummies' books; it would kind of have to be to be meaningful for this kind of software. Amateur or pro just turning digital, this is an excellent book.

This has been a great help for me in my photography, you can never have to much reference material when trying to learn ways to improve yourself.

This is a disappointment. Previous "Dummies" books have been helpful, but this has not. Not enough of the book is step-by-step, which is what I really need. I would have liked more illustrations showing the procedures and more on working with layers (again, step-by-step).
I have a MAC, not a windows machine, and even though there are some MAC-oriented instructions, not enough information is given, IMHO.

I found this book to be very confusing and of no help at all. I assumed because is was one of the "dummies" books that it would be good for beginners--not so! I had been doing some work in Photoshop 4 and thought this would be helpful, but it was a waste of time and money.

This is a good how-to book for many of the basic items in Photoshop Elements. Like most Dummies books, it sticks to the basics, but is a good reference.

I was new to photo elements and this book along with others was very helpful to learning how to use the program.