Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Photoshop 4 in 14 Days (Sams Teach Yourself)

The problem I think was a rush to get the book out by a deadline. The most serious error is that the CD-ROM does not have several of the files that are illustrated in the text. In some chapters it has several more files than mentioned in the text. There are other errors an editor should have caught when the author tries to cover the program for both PC and Mac platforms. For example, a command for a Mac may actually be the one for a PC.

I called the company about the CD-ROM and was sent a new disk (free) with several additional files (not all the missing files, but a definate improvement).

In spite of these problems, I would recommend the book to novice Photoshop users. I learned a great deal!

It's good that you can get many of the missing images at www.hayden.com, however there are still numerous mistakes in the book that can make life very difficult for the beginner.

For example, on page 116, when examining CMYK channels, figure 4.12 shows the RGB channels.

In another instance, while learning to load custom textures, the authors ask you to load a saved texture file. While texture files need to be loaded in .psd format, the authors supply only the .jpg. Thus a novice would need to understand that she needs to first save the .jpg as .psd, and then load the new texture. None of this is described.

Finally, there are numerous small omissions and oversights that make following the example more difficult. A complex program such as Photoshop can have many modes and parameters set. The frequent omission of small steps and parameters can make the examples hard to follow.

I've only made it through the first 7 chapters of this book, but I would have a hard time recommending it to anybody, particularly a new user.