Customer Reviews

Photoshop Restoration and Retouching (Macintosh Library)

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As I ventured into further and further depths into the wonderfully deep world of Photoshop, there came a need to improve my retouching technique. So I purchased both this book and also Scott Kelbys "Photo Retouching Secrets" at the same time. I gotta say, while I have gotten a few useful and neat tricks out of Kelbys book, I feel that Eismanns book is the far better piece of work for what I was looking for. My view on this comes down to the fact that I prefer to have a book that teaches me some ideas, and makes me think, versus just a book that presents a laundry list of quick tricks and tips. Same thing for the "wow" books.. while they are "fun", they aren't on my required reading list for Photoshop books... they really don't get you involved in problem solving or technical kind of learning experience that I feel is necessary to master this (Photoshop) program. So, you, the reader, have to decide what you are looking for. If you want just a quick and dirty set of tips to retouch photos and you consider yourself a beginner to light intermediate, then Kelbys book might be better. (Kelbys book is far from bad, I'm just stating a strong preference for this one instead)

However, if you seriously want to get inside the head of a great retoucher, and learn more powerful techniques, definitely check out this (Eismanns) book. Another plus to this book is Katrin never tosses you an attitude about her views. She credits other people when she has learned from them. In this regard she is about as far away from someone like the incredibly brilliant but occasionally arrogant Dan Margulis of "Photoshop 6/Classic Guide to Color Correction" fame.

The only weaknesses in the book (and the reason I deduct a star) are a less than stellar coverage of density, contrast and color correction. (however, this topic is covered quite well in the aforementioned Margulis book or the Photoshop Artistry book by Haynes/Crumpler)

This shortcoming, however, is balanced out with incredibly good portrait and glamour retouching sections as well as good discussions on restoration techniques. Seriously recommended.

I've used Photoshop for a number of years, but until now have never purchased a Photoshop how-to book. The reason was simple -- most of the Photoshop "Bibles" or "Definitive Guides" you see are filled with, let's be truthful about this, junk. They'll teach you how to create gleaming, 3-D text with marbelized textures and silly gee-whiz visual effects, but barely scratch the surface teaching what Photoshop was invented for -- photo retouching and restoration.

I've been manipulating photographs for years in Photoshop, but in just a few pages of Eismann's book I realized there was much more to learn. Eismann's clear tone, direction, and oceans of screenshots showing photos in many stages between "before" and "after," make this book the only Photoshop book really worth owning.

The techniques presented inside are smart, timeless, and will help you take your photography to a whole new level. And let's also be clear about who will benefit from this book -- just about anyone who works with images, from professional graphic designers all the way down to digital camera hobbyists. As a matter of fact, she often refers to digital cameras, and provides a plethora of techniques to consider when working with this specialized medium.

The book does not come with a CD-ROM, but Eismann does provide a web site where you can download all of the images (in their raw, untouched state) used in the book so you can work alongside it.

The book is printed on crisp, bright white paper that holds the detail of the photographs quite well -- an important factor especially for seeing the differences b/w before and after stages, and the sometimes subtle changes made.

In closing, I have never seen a more useful book than this. Anyone would benefit tremendously from buying it.

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this book since hearing of it at the annual Thunder Lizard Photoshop Conference in San Francisco in early January. Early previews had set some high levels of expectation regarding the content and application. My book arrived and I sat up all night reading it and trying the various tutorial exercises. My expectations were more than met. They were exceeded!

I am a professional photographer and educator. I have been teaching and employing Photoshop since version 2.5. In the years that have passed, I have probably purchased every major instructional book on Photoshop that has appeared. Many have had outstanding sections, but this book surpasses all of them. Its graphic design, its instructional methodology and its practical, straigtforward application of Photoshop to the commercial portrait photograper's craft is unique. Every chapter brings a new insight to bear on the daily work of the photo-retoucher. This is a MUST for any serious Photoshop user. It will be a required text for all of my future college Photoshop classes.

I must confess to a long-standing love affair with Photoshop diva Katrin Eismann. Oh, she doesn't even know who I am, and my own wife is very tolerant about it...but there it is. It started the first time I attended one of her seminars at a Photo Marketing Association convention. The presentation answered so many of my own questions about using Photoshop that I wanted to go home with the excellent handout material, study and work for a week, and go back to take the session all over again. Unlike some teachers, Eismann makes the complexities of Photoshop understandable - and fun! Her enthusiasm for the subject is infectious.

Adobe Photoshop is an extraordinarily powerful image manipulation tool, but the learning curve is long and steep. Eismann brings it all into focus. Most Photoshop books don't address my own major concern, the repair and restoration of customers' treasured ancestor portraits. Photoshop Restoration & Retouching is entirely about that. No fancy special effects or creative expression techniques, just step-by-step recipes for making pictures better quickly.

In just the first 10 minutes of reading her book I found one tip that will probably save me three minutes on every photo I scan and manipulate for the rest of my life. At minimum wage, that one alone probably adds up to thousands of dollars. (I have a camera store and a web site for people in the industry)

Eismann's writing style is comfortable and colloquial. She'll guide you, step-by-step, through the restoration or improvement of specific projects that are exactly the sort of projects your customers have been bringing you. There's a supplemental website... from which you can download approximately 60% of the images used in the book. That way you cam work along and learn by doing.

The book's not absolutely perfect as your only guide to using Photoshop. Eismann assumes you already know all the fundamentals, and I'd like to see more about using selection tools. Even so it's a tremendously valuable production tool for anyone specializing in improving photos.

Before I bought this book, I was reluctant to buy because I am running Photoshop 5.0.2, and I was questioning whether my skill level was high enough to benefit from the book. I found that almost everything in the book could be done with v.5.0. I considered myself to be somewhere between beginner and intermediate in skill levels. This book is written in a language that is easy to understand. It is absolutely loaded with information, and by the time I read up to chapter 3, I had my money's worth. Previously, I spent hours upon hours working on old family photos, with mixed success. After a short while studying the book, I was able to quickly improve the problem areas. The only possible drawback is that if you want to follow along with the tutorials, you need to download images from the author's website (which I recommend). But when you consider what this book has to offer, this is a minor inconvenience. I took the time to download all images, and save them to a CD. I've had this book for about 3 weeks, and I simply can't say enough about it!

This remarkable book is without question, the best of them all. I have purchased quite a few Photoshop Books and I would not trade this book for the rest combined. Had I known what it contained, I would have gladly paid three times the price. If you primarily work with photos this is the book for you.
It is a breeze to understand and practice the tutorials which may be downloaded. In the process of doing so, I also learned how to use PS 6 in ways I had always ignored before because I could not quite understand how to use some of the features.
Katrin Eismann is able to teach in a way that is easily understood. She holds nothing back. How to restore, retouch and process photos becomes easy. It provides a solid foundation for the intermediate and advanced user of PS6.

Well, I admit it. I'm reaching beyond my capabilities each time I open Photoshop 6.

I have been taking digital photos with a CP950, now 995, for about two years and have ongoing need to adjust images for optium results with my HP Photosmart printer. I also have a slew of photos in the closet that I'm scanning so I can preserve and/or reprint "heirlooms".

Katrin Eismann & Steve Simmons have given me one of the greatest gifts ever in my search for good Photoshop instruction. Their book on retouching and restoring images is amazing. It provides wonderfully clear real-life examples of problems I face daily with images I capture and/or scan. They make Photoshop make sense to me. Understanding layers has been a real challenge and stepping though their editing processes with them by using the images from the book's companion web site ampliphies the sensability of Photoshop's protocols and how it all works.

I should say something about their writing; it's clear, simple, direct, entertaining, playful and completely accessible. This "newbie" needs patient, step by step instruction, which they provide so well.

My heartfelt thanks to these folks for their thoughtful efforts to share their knowledge and bring Photoshop to a wider audience of users who want to preserve memories and find new ways of creative expression. YEA!

Finally a book that makes the most of what photoshop is good at, making the most of photos. This has none of the usual 50 ways to make exotic type and special effects that almost all photoshop books dwell on(being totally selftaught I have bought many of the top books and this is the most useful of all so far). It also covers glamour photo retouching which gives techniques useful for even family photos,I have not seen this covered in any other book. It is not a beginners book but is written very clearly and concisely so you don't need to be an expert to understand.

Until now, I have not purchased one single Photoshop book! (Well, I did buy Adobe's Classroom in a Book for PS 5.) Whenever I'd go to a bookstore and start flipping through the pages of the $50+, 2"-3" thick books, I'd see page after page of stuff that I did NOT want to know about. I don't need to know how to make glowing type follow a curved line, for example. Nor do I need to know how to composite multiple images, graphics, and so on (although Eismann does explain some very useful techniques for doing this).

This is a book for photographers who want to make their photographs look as good as possible. While much of the information focuses on retouching old, damaged images, the concepts apply equally to working on fresh, new images. Frankly, I thought of myself as being reasonably competent with PS, but I learned an enormous number of useful techniques that I'll use right away.

Starting with tone, exposure and color control, the book moves through detailed explanations -- "how-to's" -- of dust and scratch removal, portrait retouching, color to BW conversion, selective focus, multiple sharpening scenarios, etc. While most of the examples are "people pictures," the techniques apply to any subject matter, whether color or BW.

In chapter 1, I started putting Post-its on the edge of pages I wanted to come back to. My book looks pretty silly now with over 50 Post-its sticking out all over the place.

If one is a Photoshop novice, this is probably not the book to start with. Familiarity with the PS tools, how to make selections, how to use layers and layer masks, adjustment layers and so on should be pretty second-nature before diving in here.

While the book does not have a CD, Eismann has a very straightforward Web site from which you can download the images she uses in the book. Her step-by-step explanations are easy to follow on your own computer, using the downloaded images. Eismann's writing style is friendly, with good humor, and is easy to follow. The explanations of technique are clear and to the point. (When the book first arrived from Amazon and I saw that it wasn't 2-3 inches thick, I was worried that it might not contain much "meat." I was wrong -- less is more in this case.)

This book will have a permanent place next to my monitor.

Thank you, Katrin!

I stumbled across this in the Amazon listings and decided to take a chance, figuring I could always return it if it didn't measure up. I got a very wonderful surprise. Katrin Eismann deals with only one (very important) application of Photoshop, but she really DEALS with it. I'm finding it easy to follow her steps, understand the logic behind her approaches, and apply her techniques to my own images.

It's not a book for absolute Photoshop beginners because she assumes that you know where to find the tools and palettes. But you certainly don't need to be an expert user to get a lot out of it -- I'm not, and I have. One thing I like is that she shows two or more ways to attack most problems and gives you a good sense of the tradeoffs between them.

The book I'd compare this with most closely is Barry Haynes & Wendy Crumpler, Photoshop 5.5 Artistry. (I'm eagerly awaiting the new, Photoshop 6 edition.) Both are really wonderful. Haynes will do more for your all-round mastery of Photoshop, but Eismann is better on the very specific area she covers. Eismann's book is also a little easier to absorb because she takes things in somewhat smaller bites. On the other hand, the beauty of some of the things Haynes does may be a bit more inspiring. Buy both, if you can afford them.