The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book: Harnessing Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool, covers Photoshop CS3 (Paperback)

by Richard Lynch (Author)
Key Phrases: layer styles, new adjustment layer, green component, Color Balance, Output Levels, Drop Shadow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Praise for author's previous books:

Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 4

Review 1:
'As a "collectionner" of the best Photoshop books on the market I must recommend this excellent book from Richard Lynch to all the digital photographers among us.Other reviewers explained the content of the book in detail so I won't do the same,I can only agree their comments!
This book is not for beginners, but if you want to understand how "digital photography" sees the real world and how a camera or a scanner tranlate all what you see in the digital format then this book is for you.
Lynch is a real PRO and takes the patience to explain ALL the hidden secrets behind this tremendous Adobe's software.
This is a cheap investment for YEARS believe me; you'll learn on your own pace the multiple facets of "seeing images" like a photographer and by following the exercises and explanations of the 11 chapters (take your time to re-read from time to time and practice,practice...)you NEVER take photos the same way you did before!
The greatest bonus is the companion cd with all the hidden tools(above 100 and the images used in the book).
Richard Lynch has given us an enormous homework to do but it's worth more than any training course that costs you a hundred of bucks!
Terrific,awesome,well explained,I can't find words enough to recommend this book.'

Review 2:
'the book is full of invaluable advice. Workflow, separations, masking... The combination of Elements 4 with the book and tools covers all my expectations for a dedicated amateur. And yes, I like shooting raw, taking advantage of 16 bits,black and white... and I have still much too learn from the book!'

Review 3:
'It's an advanced book that does provide you with information about hidden features, undocumented capabilities, and things you never thought of doing with Photoshop Elements 4. As the program itself is based on Photoshop CS, there are lots of things to reveal, and Lynch does a good job of presenting them in a clear and concise way.'

Praise for Hidden Power of PS Elements 3:

Review 1: 'This book provides great information on digital color reproduction and alteration.The book has many good examples for teaching techniques for digital photographic enhancement using Elements 3. The plug-ins are great! Well worth the $$ Best book I,ve found on digital imagery and Elements 3.'

Review 2: 'I wish I could give more stars to this book....The book is written almost like a text book. I found the lessons to be deep, but the text to be very well written and very concise. Mr. Lynch writes to teach and not to show how much he knows (although this is quite evident by reading the book). The book is not just how to use the tools supplied in Photoshop Elements 3, but is about obtaining a deep understanding of the makeup of an image and how to manipulate the image with the knowledge.

Extremely impressive. At this price, it really is a gift from Richard Lynch!

Product Description
Create, correct, and control with layers,
the most powerful tool in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements

Imagine yourself in total control of every adjustment to your photos. You've seen the illustrations in glossy magazines, the fine art reproductions in museum catalogs, the award-winning pictures of professional photographers. To produce this kind of magic, understanding how to use layers for your entire breadth of image correction is key.

Discover the best ways to showcase your talent with the full power of layers from best-selling author/digital image specialist Richard Lynch. Learn what layers can do for you as an integral part of organizing image development, creating and storing image versions with nondestructive editing, and promoting a positive workflow.

Timeless, not version specific, this book will help you take layers to a new level to increase your efficiency and produce better end results, whatever release of the software you use. Step-by-step instructions and practical examples illustrate how to.

Don't make your work harder than it needs to be when you can use layers to control any adjustment using multiple forms of blending concurrently - transparency, clipping, opacity/fill, masking, modes, channel targeting, Blend If, and styles.

Author Richard Lynch is a photographer, designer, editor, web developer, and author of the popular "Hidden Powers" series on Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. He also writes for PCPhoto, Popular Photography, Digital Photographer, and Digital Photography Techniques.

* Leverage layer power to correct and enhance color, fix problems in composition, repair damage or flaws, and isolate image areas for changes, adjustments and experimental concepts

* Incorporate layers in a workflow that extracts the maximum from your camera, exploits the potential in every image and helps you organize your perceptions and ideas according to your unique vision

* Recombine layers to form new images in a nondestructive process that preserves both the original image and intermediate layers for further editing - or tomorrow's inspirations

* Dip into the accompanying CD with a robust library and presets of practice images. Create your own set of favorite composition techniques

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press (July 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240520769
• ISBN-13: 978-0240520766
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,555 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but flawed, April 15, 2008

By	Bo Østergaard Jepsen (Beijing, China) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I added this volume to my rapidly growing photoshop library in order to learn more about layers, which is indeed a very powerful and most useful weapon in the photoshop arsenal.

And there is a lot of very useful information in here, which I reckon is both the blessing and the curse of this book. After reading this book, you will definitely understand layers. However, there is a lot of text and, as a reviewer before me pointed out, not that many pictures, which to my mind, is not a very good combination. The text can be a bit hard to follow without any prior understanding of photoshop I should imagine. I was certainly glad, that I had already purchased and read other books before this one.

I'm not a big fan of the Scott Kelby approach to photography or photo editing. I think he oversimplifies the learning process in a way that makes you learn some of the hows but none of the whys. This book takes the exact opposite of Kelby's approach and loads everything you could possibly want to know about photoshop layers in your lap. This does make the book a bit heavy. You need to concentrate while using this book and you probably need to go over some of the things a couple of times.

So in conclusion I'll say, that this book is very good and very thorough, but does need an effort to go through. I wouldn't recommend it to a complete novice either, but once you get into photoshop I think it is defintely worth acquiring.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for the advanced, December 9, 2007

By	K. Arbuckle "lawman" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a great book for Photoshop. I own several Photoshop books and this one is by far the best I have read so far. From the title you might think it is just for advanced users, since it seems to be rather specialized. Even the author seems to think only experienced users will read the book. That is all wrong.

By the time you have finished a third of this 250 page book, you will not only know the layers palette (there is a great diagram on page 6), and the layers menu. He sets out his idea of the thirty essential tools, commands, palettes, and menus that you will use most often (with shortcuts) all in easy to refer to tables on pages 35-41. There are some more tables for easy reference back in chapter 1.

If you do the exercises, in that same first third of the book you will have experimented with the creation, duplication, deletion, manipulation, and grouping of layers (of course), but also color correction, techniques for selecting objects; cutting, copying, pasting, and moving objects; color balance; and most importantly how all that can be organized with the use of layers. The rest of the book explores other aspects of Photoshop all in the context of layers.

What makes this book worth five stars is that he very clearly explains not only what is being done, but also the logic of what is being done. He uses layers to organize his work and explains this workflow method in some detail. Someone just starting with Photoshop could use this book to keep from falling into some bad habits that come from poking around, which is what some of the Photoshop books with more general titles seem to do.

The author does not take on too much, but enough to do anything you would normally want to do as a photographer. He also gives you the background from which you can explore beyond the book.

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a comprehensive work on Layers, September 23, 2007

By	W. O. Vallee "photo wizard" (Rochester,NY,USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have a veritable library of Photoshop Books. When I read through this new book, I was really impressed at how well the author covered the subject matter. The exercises & CD made the book easier to follow and gave me a much better understanding of levels than I've been able to get from any other sources I've tried . I would recommend this book to anyone who is an intermediate to advanced user of Photoshop as a reference. . I would also recommend it to people just starting as a basic Photoshop companion book.