Customer Reviews

The Photoshop Elements 5 Restoration and Retouching Book

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've taken online classes, read plenty of books, spent many hours tring to interpret instuctions on portrait retouching. I read Matt's book and was like "oh that's how you do it". The light came on and stayed lit through all his tutorials. Best thing... you don't have to read the whole book to learn Elements. Want to retouch eyes - just go to that portion of the book. No need to have read previous chapters/pages. People who have never used Elements can understand his instructions easily. Matt writes with wit and gets right to the point. I love this book and keep it right next to my key board for reference.

Having used various photo editing programs with little effort, I decided to purchase PhotoShop Elements 5.0. Much to my distress, it has proven to be much more complicated than I had anticipated. Viewing the tutorials, and the help topics supplied with Elements did me little good. I am still unfamiliar with most of the Elements tools, but since I mainly use it for editing my photos, this book has been great! The book takes you step by step through the process of a specific project so that you do not have to learn what all the tools do until you need to use them. I would recommend it for anyone who uses Elements to edit their photographs - even the more advanced users. I wish all the manuals I have bought were written like this!

I'm a Photoshop User, I don't use Elements, so I was a bit put off given the focus was on Elements and frankly didn't know if anyone could come close to matching the worthiness of Katrin Eismann's seminal works on the same subject. But on the strength of Scott Kelby's (ostensibly Matt's boss at NAPP) recommendation on his blog, I went ahead and ordered a copy.

Suffice to say, I'm glad I did. From beginning to end, this book is SUBSTANTIVE. Matt has wisely decided to adopt Scott's bottom up approach... that is, Matt presents the issue at the beginning of a section and then shows you how to address the problem (so be forewarned, this is NOT an Elements primer) quickly and effectively. And of course, given that Elements is by and large a subset of its big brother, all the techniques described are easily applied in Photoshop.

In the end, Matt has done well enough that he too can sit on the same stage as Ms. Katrin Eismann (if you haven't read any of her stuff, you should, she is just flat brilliant). My copy is soon to be dogeared as I will be attempting to script as many of the techniques as I can... for those that I can't, I'm practicing the technique and then creating a spreadsheet with 2 columns; Problems & Solutions as there are just a TON of solutions in this work.

So, even if you are a Photoshop bigot like me, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy. It is Matt's best work yet.

Wow !! After reading the first few chapters I was amazed. Every lesson covered questions that I had using Photoshop Elements. I love the way it was written, very straight forward, and not hard to follow. It was also very nice to see the before and after photos at the end of each lesson. Matt did such an awesome job with this book. Highly recommended to anyone who wants to give their pictures an extra edge !!

Matt has hit a home run with this book. The step-by-set techniques and variety of subjects he covers in this book has something for everybody working with Photoshop Elements 3,4 or 5.
The book is setup that you can easily find a particular subject and then follow the specific tutorial.

This is a must have book if your retouching or restoring photos.

I've used Photoshop Elements for several years. I started with Elements 2 & upgraded to PE3 a couple of years ago. I found it too complicated so I went back to PE2. The problem is, I never learned to use layers & fudged on restorations & enhancements. Some looked pretty good, some looked "fake". Without layers there was lots I couldn't do. I got the PE5 program a few months ago & thought I might be able to figure it out. I gave up until 3 weeks ago. That's when I got Matt's book. I have worked thru most of the book & love the detailed visual guide for each lesson. I don't want theory, I just want a simple explanation on how to do things. I can't say enough about this wonderful book. I was able to go to Matt's website & download all of the "before" photos that are in the book. I followed the instructions for each lesson using his photos. After finishing each lesson I worked with photos of my own. I can't imagine a better PSE how-to book than this!

I received my copy of Matt Kloskowski's book and am very pleased with the content. It addresses all of the problems you can encounter when trying to restore and retouch photos. It is written in a straightforward way with all of the instructions illustrated so they are easy to follow. I would highly recommend it to anyone who works with digital photos. I'll be keeping this one on my computer desk for a quick reference when I'm presented with a retouching or restoration problem.

I have been using Photoshop Elements for quite some time and have many of the books printed on the subject. This is not as comprehensive as Barbara Brundage's, Scott Kelby's or Philip Andrews but it is excellent. A really great resource and good for a beginner to intermediate user. There are many ways of doing any job, certainly so with Photoshop, and Matt often uses a different approach; I've gotten a few 'tricks' different than shown by other authors. The instructions are easy to follow and an advantage (at least for me) is he does not rely on an enclosed DVD of his photo. I like to learn on mine! Definitely recommended!

Love this book, it's very detailed with step by step instructions for any lever user to understand and complete the intended task. I Highly Recommend this book for continued learing of this software.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a new user to Elements or even those who have been using it for a while. You can always learn some new, or improved techniques that you had not thought about. The examples are very easy to follow and they work. They are grouped logically and it is well written with very few errors. You can not go wrong with this book.