Customer Reviews

Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read over 30 Photoshop books over the last 15-years (including two previous editions of this book). Nothing compares with "Real World Photoshop." It is truly authoritative, clear and practical. Of all those 30 books if I had to just pick one, it would be this - truly the gold standard. If you are going to use Photoshop as a professional or a serious amateur, you owe it to yourself to read this book very carefully. Twice.

The book is lengthy (984 pages) but for such a rich program that much space is required. Scattered throughout the book are hundreds of "Tips" in bold letters. If you just did a speed-reading of these I bet your Photoshop skills would double. Rare for such a technical book is the clarity of the writing - it's actually a pleasure to read. They express complex ideas clearly without resorting to obscure language. In general, the illustrations are excellent and large enough to clearly demonstrate what they are supposed to.

What would make it better? I wish the discussion on Merge to HDR (High Dynamic Range) were more comprehensive and less dismissive. Likewise, the cursory mention of LAB color space as for "geeks only" seems short sighted in light of the revelations in Dan Margulis's new "LAB Color" book.

In a book this long you expect a few mistakes, such as the statement that "The Tint control lets you fine-tune the color balance along the axis that's perpendicular to the one controlled by the Temperature slider...". However in this case, they are not perpendicular, because there are three-color axes, not two. But these flaws are the rare exceptions.

A quick search here on Amazon.com for books on Photoshop turned up 1,497 titles.
Unless you are an absolute beginner, you can skip 1,496 of those books. Just buy this one and you will have all you need.

Henry F. Domke.
(...)

This book was written by the author of Real World Camera Raw and Real World Color Management. I own the second of these books and found that it is the best book around for color management, so I gave this book a shot. There are Fourteen Chapters (Building a PS System, Tips & Tricks, Image Essentials, Color Essentials, Color Settings, Digital Darkroom, Making Selections, ... Multimedia and the Web) covering about 915 pages. A very thorough book - which is the reason for the high price tag.

From Chapter one, you can tell that the author isn't going to `gloss over' anything. He goes into depth about how to setup paging files, configure RAM, etc. This is not beginner stuff and is not aimed at someone who just bought CS2 and wants to use it. The book moves directly into "Tips and Tricks." Again, not a beginner chapter, but aimed at getting users who are familiar with PS to use it more efficiently. This one chapter covers about 50% (or more) of the tips in Scott Kelby's Tips and Tricks book - very good!

Chapter 3 (Image Essentials) begins with a very thorough explanation of pixels and paths. It explains bit depth, resolution, types of resampling, CMYK vs RGB, etc. Chapters 4 & 5 provide 125 pages of color - Color Essentials, Color Management, Color Settings. Remember, this guy wrote the book on Color Management, so the level of detail is intense, but the explanations are clear. Finally, on page 227, we break out of the theory and the last 700 or so pages are dedicated to hands-on PhotoShop.

If you are looking for a "step by step" How-to book on PhotoShop, this isn't it. Instead its a comprehensive guide on getting the most out of the best photo software product on the market. Its definitely slanted toward photographers (as opposed to graphical artists). I believe that I've read through most of the CS2 books out there - and purchased a few of them. For me, this provided the most useful information and the clearest explanations.

In my recent effort to educate myself in matters of Photoshop CS2 I read in detail three books - Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers by Martin Evening, Photoshop CS2 by Fraser & Blatner, and The Photoshop CS2 book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. Of the three, I would rank the Evening and the Fraser & Blatner books as comprehensive books that, if the reader would fully understand all that was discussed, they would be considered a Photoshop Pro. The Kelby book I considered to be quite basic in that it covered only some of the principal topics and did so in an elementary fashion (it would take Kelby four pages with all his illustrations and stepwise instructions to cover what the other books might cover in one). I would recommend the Kelby book for a hobbyist that doesn't want to devote a lot of learning time and who wishes only a basic knowledge of Photoshop CS2 in order to occasionally turn out a nice image. I would recommend either of the other two books if one wants a mastery of what CS2 can really do. But, be warned that the subject is complex and will take a lot of time to learn. Of the two, Evening's book has the advantage in that it is a little less expensive, he includes a disk containing the images used in many of his tutorials so the reader can follow along with the same exercises, and because he is a fashion photographer many of his images are fashion shots of pretty women. The Fraser & Blatner book has the advantage of being somewhat larger and more complete and goes into deeper detail on some aspects of CS2. Both of these books have a high orientation to producing images for commercial press publication. I would recommend that if one wants to really learn CS2 they read both books, even though the same topics are covered in both, the subject is sufficiently complex it pays to learn it twice from perhaps somewhat different angles.

When I teach my classes, and I'm asked to recommend a book, I wave around only two books...and not just because I have only two hands. Martin Evening's beautiful book (labelled 'for photographers' but valuable to any Photoshop user) and this one.

Bruce Fraser is the Photoshop geek's Photoshop Geek. He also happens to be disarmingly self-deprecating and extremely articulate. A fine one to explain the intricacies of not only HOW to do a thing, like one finds in other books (but not as well as here), but also WHY we do it.

As a novice user put it, however, this book isn't necessarily a "how-to" for beginners. But it DOES grow with the user. Old timers like me still pull out gems from this book, and I know my way around the app. But those who have just a little mileage with Photoshop can still benefit mightily.

As a teacher, I hate it when I'm requested to "just show me what button to press". As Fraser and his funny but scary-smart coauther David Blatner put it, those buttons have a disconcerting way of moving from version to version. Recipes are fine, but knowing how to cook is way better.

Learn how to cook with Photoshop. Buy this book. And no, I don't get a kickback! But there are only two books of the dozens out there that I recommend without reservation. Now go make good images...

This really is the top pick for a book on Photoshop CS2. Keep in mind though that it is much more of a manual than a tutorial. It is probably a bit of a steep learning curve for an absolute beginner. It has far more depth than almost any other book on the subject. It also lives up to its title "Real World" in that the authors give very useful pragmatic advice as to what is actually useful and how best to apply the tools to situations you are likely to encounter. It IS NOT a step-by-step tutorial. If I had to have only one book on Photoshop it would be this one. If you are truely starting from scratch I'd recommend that you supplement this book with a few online tutorials just to get you up and playing with the software a little before diving into the details.

It is worth noting there are plethora of really poor photoshop books out there. Besides this book, which is probably the pick of the litter, you might also consider:

Scott Kelby's book: This one is extremely basic, holds your hand the whole way, has huge dialog box captures and really does nothing to educate you as to what is really going on. It is a very shallow book. I only list it here because if you are actually terrified of photoshop this might be a friendly introduction. That said, I don't understand why such a book exists. It makes perfect sense for Photoshop Elements, but if you are actually bothering to use CS2 it implies you want more tools and control that Kelby's book introduces you to.

Martin Evening's book: Also a good in depth book. Not quite as deep as Real World, but also a bit more tutorial oriented. A very good supplement and probably a number of people's first choice.

Photoshop LAB Color, Dan Margulis: Once you know your way around Photoshop you'll want some help actually deciding what exactly to do to your images. The LAB colorspace offers some of the fastest ways to improve images but is a bit counter-intuitive at first. If you tend to photograph natural scenes it is the one colorspace to work in. Get this book, you won't be dissappointed.

In short, if you don't need to be led by the hand and want a very in depth resource that covers nearly everything but focuses most on what is useful then you want "Real World Photoshop CS2".

This book covers a lot of ground, and doesn't just cover surface topics either, its really an in depth look into the amazing world of Photoshop.
I'm not going to cover the contents of each chapter, you can find another review that does just that, all that I would like to do is give another point of view that I wish someone else had given when I was looking to buy this book.

I have about 13 Photoshop cs2 books, and this is probably the one that has disappointed me the most. Its not a very practical book, although it covers a lot of ground, I found the explanations to be a tad incoherent and a bit too long winded, they go into so much detail and become so technical that you end up loosing site of what you are trying to achieve. For instance I worked through the chapter on color settings-(setting up Photoshop so that what you see on the monitor and what actually prints looks the same) and I found that after working through almost 100 pages, I was no closer to understanding color management than when I started, and ended up having to go onto the internet to try and figure out how it works.

I want to point out, its not that the subject matter is too advanced, its just in my opinion not very clearly presented compared to many other books out there. If you compare their take on removing an image from its background with Katrin Eismann's book "Masking & compositing" you will see immediately what I'm talking about. Their teaching style is very cumbersome, and top heavy compared to Katrin's sleek, streamlined articulate approach, and this goes for every chapter in the book.

If you are trying to learn how to use some of the more advanced controls in Photoshop, I would recommend that you look somewhere else, where as if you have been using Photoshop's advanced functions for 15 years and want to find out how to tweak those controls so that you can get the most out of them then this book may certainly help you there.

This (along with the Fraser RAW and the Eismann PS Masking and Compositing) is a bedrock book for those who really, really want to use Photoshop to the fullest. If you have the PS 7 version or earlier, you must buy this new edition. There are enough new features in CS2 even over CS that it might be worthy upgrading the book as well as the software even for the CS to CS2 switch.

It is incredibly complete and thorough. This is not a quick-read book, nor is the Eismann, but if you understand the contents, you really will know PS at a professional level. And be able to use it to the fullest. There are so many quick, trick books about PS...but they miss the fundamentals and gloss over the proper use of the tools. Don't waste time or money on the '101 tricks to conquer Photoshop' books unless you want quick gimmicky guides for limited problems.

It's an all too rare pleasure to read a book by people who know what they're talking about and who also understand the English language. Fraser and Blatner fill the bill on both counts, as they did with their previous book on Photoshop CS. Yes, this book covers a lot of the same ground the previous book did and covers it in the same way, but why change what's already exceptionally good just to gild the lily. There have been important changes and additions in Photoshop CS2. If you were a CS user, the CS2 book gives you a good review of the subject and brings you up to date. If you weren't a CS user then the book is essential. Nothing else out there comes even close to this gold standard of Photoshop coverage. Fraser and Blatner have hit it out of the park again.

I'm an Engineer and Physicist, so I'm always eager to go to the root cause of the things I'm doing. Bruce and David definitely know what's behind Photoshop and they'll explain it with deep details, too deep. This is the only reason why I can give the book only 4*. There are plenty of examples, but they take long and convoluted way to explaining things. If you are a beginner, look for something else, but if you're an intermediate, this may be the book for you. It is very comprehensive and can give you very professional instruments to improve your Photoshop workflow. They even show you many different ways to tackle the same problem in the most effective way. The drawback is the tiring length. Probably the same concepts could have been summarized in less than 2/3 of the pages.
Moral of the story: If you can focus your attention through the 1000 pages of the book, you'll end up with a large luggage of bits of information, tip and tricks you even ever dreamed of.

First of all, I would like to thank the authors of this book for doing such a wonderful job of explaining some of the toughest concepts of Photoshop CS2 in an unconventional but easy-to-understand way.

Emphatically speaking, this has been, by far, the best book on Adobe Photoshop CS2 for me. I have gone through almost every known Photoshop book just not to leave any feature unlearnt or to satisfy my hunger to learn every single thing about Photoshop. I have been an Adobe Photoshop guy right from the beginning and had been looking for a book which can throw light on the hidden features of this gigantic photography software. This book, in real terms, is Photoshop CS2 THE BIBLE. I tried to get myself clear on many tiny features of Photoshop CS2 but most of the books failed to help me understand those small but vital features. I do have sound knowledge of the software even though the rich content of the book did not allow me to skip even a single page of this book. The most striking thing about the book, apart from the richness of the content, is the approach taken by the authors to explain Photoshop CS2. Their explanation makes things very easy to understand.
For example, if you know levels and Curves. This is what they have to say about them.
"If Levels is an automatic transmission, Curves is a stick shift."

Of course, this book is NOT for those who want to learn Photoshop tricks. Instead, it is for those who want to know "the mechanism of Photoshop CS2". If you want to learn Photoshop CS2 from scratch and have patience and passion, this book IS for YOU. You can count on my words.