The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book (5th Edition) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Walk into a design studio and you just might see the popular The Photoshop 5.0/5.5 Wow! Book on the shelf. If there's a technique or effect that would work perfectly for the job at hand, whether it's adding a chrome or chiseled-in-stone look, or simply better understanding the usage of the lasso tool, designers, photographers and illustrators know to reach for this book.

The recent edition incorporates the updated features of Photoshop versions 5 and 5.5, including layer effects, "magnetic" options for many of the selection tools, actions that "record" a sequence of commands, and the art history brush that applies textured strokes to an image.

Even with all this great new content, the original organization mirrors from previous editions. The first two chapters cover fundamentals. Subsequent chapters begin with basics pertinent to the techniques covered, but each entry can be read independently. The techniques are shown in step-by-step instructions accompanied by full-color illustrations and, for many, digital files on the CD-ROM accompanying the book.

It's possible to dive right into the middle and tackle whatever problem is currently facing you. Silhouetting out a person's portrait is always tricky, particularly getting a good selection around hair. With potential time-wasters like this, Photoshop 5.0/5.5 Wow! is a lifesaver. And readers who have put off learning how to make full use of layers will find a whole chapter and a fun set of "dress up" files on the CD-ROM (digital equivalents of paper dolls) that will have you shamelessly proficient in no time.

With hundreds of illustrations, tips for making work quicker and easier, a gallery of work and advice from experienced Photoshop users, illustrated demos for each filter, and so much more, it's quite a hefty book. The CD-ROM has stock images, plug-ins, actions, and tutorial files. From "Making a Mezzotint" to "Making Buttons from Photos," The Photoshop 5.0/5.5 Wow! book is The Joy of Cooking for digital image-making. It'll have you cooking with Photoshop in no time. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered: Step-by-step instructions on tools, techniques, and effects in Adobe Photoshop 5.0/5.5, including using layers, masks, and channels; enhancing photographic images by solarizing, applying a mezzotint, and other effects; making well-executed collages; using filters; painting effects; going from Illustrator to Photoshop and vice versa; adding special effects such as multicolor glow and others; using the new Web tools in version 5.5. CD-ROM contains tutorial files with before-and-after images; try-out applications and plug-ins; actions, gradients, brushes, stock photos, and a teacher's guide that outlines course projects using The Photoshop Wow! Book.

Product Description

Learn creative, practical, timesaving techniques for Web graphics, illustration, photo manipulation, and special effects with The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book. This updated edition of the award-winning bestseller features real-world examples from artists and designers of the kind of stunning, professional, full-color artwork you want to produce, and provides clear, step-by-step instructions for applying these techniques to your own projects.

The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book covers the new Extract command for difficult-to-select subjects and shows you how to use ImageReady 2 to create rollovers, animated GIFs, and sliced images for speedy, high-quality Web graphics. You'll also learn how to apply Layer Effects and get the most from "live" type. The book thoroughly explains the History palette and how to use it to perform multiple undos, new painting techniques with the Impressionist History and Art History brushes, and fast and flexible image-editing. The CD-ROM contains "before and after" tutorial files for the techniques in the book, with all layers and channels intact, as well as copy-and-paste Wow! Layer Effects, custom Actions, filters, and demos.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education; 5 edition (November 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201353717
• ISBN-13: 978-0201353716
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #187,916 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most useful book I have found on applied Photoshop, March 15, 2000

By	Logginz (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This is a *fantastic* book (providing you don't own the previous versions of it). What some people are calling its main weakness is its greatest source of strength: it has been refined and iterated so many times that the material VERY well-written and usable. Things I appreciate most: The focus is on teaching techniques with Photoshop, not features... many other books show you individual features without the context of a real world problem. Here, they show you how to use combinations of features to reach a desirable, artistically tasteful outcome. They don't just tell you what all the features are, they tell AND SHOW you WHY you would want to use them all and how you need to think about them. (2) they cover all the major ways that one would use Photoshop... for compositing, for web work, for photo touch-up and so on. As such, it's a great reference and I've looked things up over and over in it in the 3 months that I've used it. (It's also in color which gives it a huge advantage over many other books.) Photoshop is an extremely hard program to learn without help, and this the first and only book to have vaulted me into competence and understanding of what is going on.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kudos to the authors!, January 10, 2000

By A Customer

I agree with the readers, about the book's small changes. Though there haven't been drastic changes in the book, it isn't really fair to give it one star either. The authors managed to cover every new feature and tool, even giving them special coverage, plus the full color layout, makes the book a sheer haven to read. (And also because this book was written for Intermediate-Advanced users, the idiot who bought the book without noticing the fact first has got to be the stupidest person I know.) If the program didn't change, how big of a change do you expect from the book. The coverage from the Photoshop 4 Wow! Book was amazing, so there really isn't much to cover anymore in version 5, I'm sure. This book is great, the CD-ROM, is even better than any other CD-ROM which came with other books I've read, no CD-ROM managed to come up with such great actions and collage layers such as this one.(Due to distribution laws, I'm sure the authors loved to give you a fully functional copy of Alien Skin's Eye Candy and Kai's Power Tools, but couldn't)

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent, January 17, 2000

By A Customer

This book is full of techniques which go beyond simple basics. I almost did not buy it because of the negative reviews included here but now that I have it I am totally pleased and baffled by the negativity seen in some of the reviews. The photos, colors, illustrations, and text are excellent.