Adobe Photoshop CS4 Studio Techniques (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: smart object, camera raw, creative techniques, Dan Ablan, Production Essentials, Quick Mask (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Studio Techniques has been completely updated to cover the new features in CS4. In a friendly, easy-going style that's long on information and short on techno-babble, Photoshop Hall-of-Famer Ben Willmore and photographer Dan Ablan guide you through the concepts and features that will truly make a difference in how you use Photoshop every day. They'll take you from blindly following step-by-step instructions to an in-depth understanding of how Photoshop works, cutting through the fat to focus on what they consider to be Photoshop's essential features. This full-color book delivers the content in three easily digestible sections: Working Foundations, Production Essentials, and Creative Explorations. Streamlined for this new edition, the book will distill Photoshop's vast capabilities down to what you need to know for a full understanding of the program, while simultaneously focusing more directly on best practices for the photographer. Beginning with a quick "refresher course" on the working foundations of Photoshop, you'll move on to real-world production techniques. Finally, you'll get to fully explore Photoshop's creative potential by blending and enhancing images, creating collages, retouching photographs, colorizing, and working with filters and layer masks. By the time you finish this book, your creativity and efficiency levels will soar and you'll feel like you finally "get" Photoshop.

About the Author

Considered to be one of the all-time great Photoshop gurus, Ben Willmore has personally taught over 50,000 Photoshop users on four continents. Famous for finding the simplicity that lies within Photoshop's most complex features, and for his signature teaching style of "not just how but why," Ben was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2004. Dan Ablan is president of AGA Digital Studios, Inc., and author of twelve books on computer graphics and publishing. Dan is an accomplished photographer and 3D animator, working the arts for the past twenty years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Adobe Press; 1 edition (March 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321613104
• ISBN-13: 978-0321613103
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #235,335 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I finally understand!, April 18, 2009

By	Susan Walker "Ben & Dan Fan" (Ohio, USA!) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been using photoshop professionally for a few years if you can call it that. Like a lot of people I would mess around with the curves not really knowing what they do to my images. Then I'd adjust the levels and eventually end up with what I thought was a decent edited photo. I like the other books out there for quick tips and recipes but it was clearly this studio techniques book that helped me finally understand what the hec i was doing.

This is not a step by step cookbook type of book but instead its a journey from the basic overview of CS4 to the complex curves, histograms, layers, sharpening and more. Do yourself a favor and get this book if you want to really learn photoshop, not just click the buttons and hope for the best. Congrats Ben and Dan on a terrific book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get This One Excellent Photoshop CS4 Book And Save Yourself Some Time And Tears, September 6, 2009

By	J. S. Osthoff (Minneapolis, Mn USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I would like to recommend a book for those, who are like me, learning Photoshop or switching to the CS4 version. It is the main text used in my current Photoshop class.

This book gives a fast overview of what's new and the basic tools, then dives into the deeper mechanics of just what makes Photoshop the most efficient image manipulation tool on the market today.

This was chosen for the students in my class, because the philosophy of this book meshes with my professor's own ideals of Photoshop use (and he is a stickler for efficient, lean and potent work).

It is a step-by-step tutorial/manual for gaining proficiency in Photoshop.
I am enjoying it very much and find it emphasizes what the pros use and do over the sometimes sloppy methods of flashy Photoshop pizazz books that sometimes appear.

Web graphics, electronic publishing, art, poster creation - whatever your creativity leads you to, this book will serve you in acheiving your goals. If you want to learn how to "do Photoshop right", then this is a great first step on the journey to not only eye-appealing image wizardry, but most importantly Photoshop elegance and professional mastery.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great New Edition, August 25, 2009

By	Alex Rosati (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

I'm a longtime fan of Ben Willmore and like to attend his workshops when the cruise through town. His books have always been enlightening in their approach and this new version is no different. I don't like the missing CD but I emailed Dan Ablan, the co-author who handled the revision for this title and to my surprise, he emailed me back almost instantly. He was pleasant and friendly and frankly I was quite amazed. It's great to know that an author can be contacted for questions and that's not something you find often.

About the book. I found it to be a very good transition from the CS3 version to CS4. I thought it might cover more of the CS4 features and skip some of the photoshop guts that the studio techniques book is known for, but it didn't. Yes the book is slightly slimmer and there's no CD. But that doesn't take away from the content, explanation of curves, blending modes, levels, sharpening and lots more. I found this book to be extremely valuable to get me up to speed. The layout and quality of this book is great, and the image examples are on par with what I'd expect from Peachpit publishing. Dan has done a great job coming in on the heels of Ben's work and retooling it for this new version. This was no small task and it's apparent throughout the book.

If you want to understand what you're clicking in Photoshop, rather than just pressing buttons and hoping that you end up with the right look - stimulate the economy and buy yourself this book.