Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS2 Visual Encyclopedia

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

 

 

This book is a heavy volume, but I venture to say that it's just about worth its weight in gold. It contains nearly 400 pages of large-format, step-by-step, illustrated references to Photoshop tools and techniques. Every major tool is here, along with scores of easy-to-follow techniques -- all in color, with numbered steps. An added bonus is the multitude of useful cross-references that appear in nearly every spread. All of this works together to create a supremely useful reference for quick, accessible Photoshop solutions. Every Photoshop user would benefit from this superb publication, and for students, beginning or intermediate users, or those getting acquainted with CS2, it's a "must have."

This book is absolutely awesome. I'm just an amateur who uses Photoshop on digital photos, and the beauty of PS has always been that just about anyone can use it at a comfortable depth -- relying on the adjustment tools and not doing anything too tricky. However, this book give me an instant boost to several levels above where I was operating previously. Now I'm working with layers, masks, and channels, doing color replacements and composites that I never would have considered or attempted before...and all I had to do was go to the technique in which I was interested and simply go through the illustrative steps. I'm an instant expert, so to speak, and my creativity has been unleashed. Amazing!

Most computer books are either a reference guide in a dictionary like alphabetical format, or else they are a tutorial where they start with a blank screen and tell you to do this, do that until you have used most of the functions avaiable in the software package.

This book is different, an interesting and useful combination of the reference format and the tutorial format. Basically it is a reference book, but then each subject is treated in tutorial format. The book is broken into two major parts: tools (about one third of the book) and techniques. Within each part it is arranged alphabetically:

A - Annotations: Attach a Note
B - Background Color
- Blur Tool
- Burn Tool
and so on.

Reading the table of contents will give you a pretty good idea of what's included in the book, and then you can go to the particular entry as you need to do something. This is a format that works for me. As the Visual Books tag line says: 'Read Less - Learn More.' Sooner or later you will have read about and used all the tools and techniques, and it's almost painless to learn what you need as you need it.

This book is awesome - I just bought it (April 2008). I bought Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers a while back and swear by it - but wow - Photoshop CS2 Visual Encyclopedia is even better. It has so much more content - it is chucked full of tips and techniques in a very well organized manner. While I'm working in CS3, obviously the content and tips and techniques are still very useful and valid. I'm a professional photographer and would highly recommend this book to anyone using CS2 or CS3.

There are more helpful books out there. Though the illustrations are very helpful, the end product of the examples are pretty much useless. I would like to see some real world uses for the tools. For example, the burn tool shows how to make a shadow darker on the cuff of a kid's sleeve; I would rather see an interesting photo subject that would become more interesting because of the use of burning. Also, a lot of the examples have solid backgrounds, which makes certain corrections really, really easy, however they are not applicable in the real world especially if you use Photoshop CS2. Also, with the "color palette" explanation, what is the purpose of putting a green mark on oranges. After the dodge tool is used, the image is still inferior whereas it could have been used to improve the entire picture. Then I love the healing brush spot tool. It honestly looks like the process was done backwards because it looks like this scribble was put on the image for the sake of the example. Rather than a nice neat scribble on an evenly lighted forehead, I would have liked to have seen that scribble go into the hair, over a facial feature, or into a background - and then corrected. Furthermore, the healing brush tool used for the restoration of an old photo is far too simplistic - old images don't come that perfect with a nice perfect flaw. Then the smudge tool changes the petals on a flower to a solid smudge - which I don't know what this accomplishes. I guess what I am trying to say is that the book would be a whole lot more helpful if more interesting images were used and more realistic problems tackled.

This is a perfect book if you are a beginner with Photoshop.
It is full of good images and step by step actions.
If you prefer a book for beginners and avanced users, take a look in the books by Scott Kelby.

I bought this book based on the reviews I read on this website. I also got 3 other books: The photoshop cs2 book for digital photographers by Scott Kelby, Photoshop masking and compositing by Katrin Eismann and Photoshop cs2 killer tips by Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson. The visual encyclopedia is the worst of the four. Scott Kelby is a photoshop wizard who is also a very clear and often amusing writer. I'd buy any of his books. Katrin Eismann's book, masking and compositing, is pretty much indispensible if you are going to be seriously manipulating and compositing images. She has years of experience and her writing is in depth and easy to understand.
The Visual Encyclopedia was put together by about 30 people with Stephen Romaniello as the Author. He is a very bad, very boring, very confusing writer. Take this sentance for example:"To finish the process, you need a brush tool and a black or white Forground color swatch to finish the process." That's from page 304, one of maybe 20 pages that I've read. In addition to several credited editors there are also 3 people credited for 'quality control'. You could learn from this book but you won't learn much. A true photoshop encyclopedia would require volumes of books much thicker than this one. This book barely scatches the surface. Camera Raw is covered in 4 picture filled pages. Unless you like reading bad textbooks or are looking for new ways to fall asleep, I would not buy this book. I wish I never had.

The Adobe Photoshop CS2 Visual Encyclopedia is of a great help as a by the mac side reference look around something you forgot or heard about and are not sure how to proceed book. It is visual, for as there are many intelligences, and it goes right to the point. And, as every thing else on life, it does not tell you what the end is going to be.