Customer Reviews

Real World Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers

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

 

 

Any attempt to describe the current version of Photoshop in one book is a formidable task. Each new generation of Photoshop contains the features of the previous one as well as all the latest bells and whistles that make you want to go out and buy it. The folks that published this book have managed to pack all this information into one 500+ page book, and do so very nicely.

I am in technical support at a color management consultant firm, so this review is mainly aimed at the color management aspects of this book. In short, this book is:

- Very readable, easy to understand,
- Explains industry standards you need to know and best practices that you can trust are accurate,
- A continuation of what has been considered the bible of color management in Photoshop.

While Chavez is listed as the only author, it is clear that he continues in the same tradition as in previous books of this series (Real World Photoshop CS4 for Photographers, CS3, etc.) that also included David Blatner and the late Bruce Frasier. These men have been giants in this field - not just because of their thorough knowledge, but because of the way they communicate these complicated concepts in easy to understand ways. Many of the explanations of color management processes in this book have evidently been repurposed from earlier editions of this series. I consider this to be a good thing, because this series has commonly recommended for years to those who want good, readable, practical, "real-world" information on how to get good color in printing or viewing in Photoshop. What a new book in this series needs is to update the excellent information that has already been distilled through this series, so that we continue to understand CS5 and the new features it has.

They have condensed the page layout so that there is more information on each page, and slightly less white space, which may be why this book at 500+ pages has fewer pages than some of the previous books (CS3 had over 700 pages). However, this layout does not seem dense or hard to read, so they did a good job with that. There are full color illustrations or screen shots on almost every page. (Most of the screenshots are on the Mac platform; Windows will be similar.)

But mostly what you want to buy this book for is the accuracy of the content. Digital color is often a confusing, sometimes controversial thing, with many people claiming to know answers that are often contradictory. (Try asking a crowd why your prints come out too dark compared to your monitor!) This book gives you information you can depend on.

RealWorld Adobe Photoshop for Photographers offers keys to Photoshop users on how to make the most of the program, from using more efficient processing workflows and correcting tone to neutralizing colors, improving contrast, working with layers, and more. Black and white and color screen shots and examples throughout make this a solid pick for any who have Photoshop's basics down and want more detail. The coverage of Camera Raw 6 and Bridge CS5 makes this title an outstanding pick.

Real World Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers is a technical book clearly explained, and it seems like no theme has been omitted.
Should you want to understand how best to utilize Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, Color & Tonal Correction, & Sharpening for your photographs this book is excellent.
Conrad Chavez is the previous author or Color Management without the Jargon, and there is no doubt he is an imaging veteran who offers this book as a gift of his vast wisdom
to any sincere photographer and student of Photoshop CS5 and Camera Raw.

I am an engineer and an amateur photographer who spends a quite a bit of time editing photos. I find that i need two different kinds of books: workflow with focus on solving frequently occurring problems, and, a reference book that covers all of the features. I tend to use the reference when i encounter new problems. I rated this book based on how it fits into what i've found i need, a key topics workflow and a reference book. This book falls into the basic reference class. It appears to be aimed at users who already have enough experience with Photoshop to have a rough idea of the kinds of problems they encounter and they are sufficiently familiar with the terminology so that they can find their way through the book. I do not see this as a beginner's book.

I purchased this book based on my experience with the excellent Real World Illustrator CS5 book. In fact this book had a lot of similarities in form with the Illustrator book, however, given that its aim is to so support Photographers, it failed to provide one important aspect, a clear focus on workflow throughout the book. I returned the book and purchased books by Kelby and Evening with similar titles. While this book mentions workflow, it fails to provide a useful, coherent, model for photography workflow in Photoshop. As a light reference it is merely ok, but limited in detail - some people may like that, so i gave it 3 stars. I suggest you compare this book against the equivalent Kelby and Evening books. I own the CS4 equivalent Kelby book and it clearly falls into my "frequently occurring problems" with workflow class.

Just to make clear my point, without workflow, and careful choices in the approach you take to problem solving, Photoshop's feature set can be overwhelming. We only have so many hours in a day, so establishing good workflow with the fewest possible useful solutions for each problem is key to having a good time and producing good work. While this book is an improvement over books of the past that were too feature centric, it still has too many feature discussions rather than presenting problem centric workflow based solutions.

I reviewed this book by looking at the chapter and section titles to see what it covered, and, i reviewed in detail two problems: casts and sharpening. In both cases the solutions offered were a modest improvement on the explanation provided by Adobe's help and they weren't sufficient if your pictures failed to fall within a very typical range of problems. In the Kelby CS4 book they offered two different, very useful, solutions, so i ordered, but have not yet received, the Kelby CS5 book.

I rated it three stars because there are better CS4 reference books i already own, yes they are missing the new features, but the fundamentals of problem solving are more accessible in those books. I have ordered the Kelby and Evening CS5 books but haven't received them, so again, my comparison was a new CS5 book against existing CS4 books that i own.

I have no relationship with any of the publishers or authors of any books mentioned.