Photoshop 5 for Windows for Dummies (Paperback)

by Deke McClelland (Author) "Adobe Photoshop is arguably the most comprehensive and popular photo editor around..." (more)
Key Phrases: regular type tool, page preview box, fade bar, Auto Levels, Bonus Supplement, Unsharp Mask (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
This Dummies guide is designed for beginners who want to learn the core features in Photoshop 5 for Windows in a short amount of time. You start off with an overview of the two aspects of the package--painting images and editing images--and learn what's new in this version. The author explains how to navigate the interface using zooming, guides, and grids. In the second part of the book, he discusses image size, resolution, pixels, color, file formats, and file-saving and -printing issues. The third part of the book focuses on painting, photo retouching, and undoing your work--using the eraser and History palette, for example. In the fourth part, you really start messing with pixels by learning the basic selection tools, such as lasso and rectangle selections, and the more advanced ones, such as adding to and subtracting from a selection, extending a magic wand selection, and transforming selections and paths. You also apply color and gradients to selections. Finally, in the fifth part, you work with layers, type, filters, and advanced color-correction tools, such as contrast and brightness.

You can follow along with the projects as closely as you like, or just get general how-to tips for your own work. The book offers simple, clear discussion and quick technical tips, shortcuts, and warnings of common pitfalls, all denoted by easy-to-spot icons. Icons also note a feature that's new to this version. (The book assumes that you don't necessarily know any version of the package but alerts you to any changes in case you do.) Two full-color sections show examples of the project files, some in various stages of editing. The book has the same humorous, light approach to learning that other Dummies books have, and this makes it all the more accessible, especially if you're intimidated by what you've got to learn. The last section of the book, "The Part of Tens," features 10 techniques to memorize, 10 funny ways to distort faces, and 10 ways to output your work. These tidbits provide a good basis for becoming comfortable with the essential Photoshop tasks. A Macintosh version of the book is also available. --Kathleen Caster

Product Description
Transform ordinary images into breathtaking works of digital art with the advanced power and endless possibilities of Photoshop 5, Adobe's state-of-the-art digital imaging software. Take the grand tour of Version 5 with veteran tour guide Deke McClelland, and then move into new and exciting realms of digital wizardry as you master an array of text effects, image enhancements, and other wondrous things that make Photoshop 5 so hugely popular among the digiterati.

Photoshop guru McClelland takes you gently -- and intelligently -- through the world of pixels, paintbrushes, and special effects with friendly, easygoing, down-to-earth tips and tricks to help you master the fine art of digital imagery. Clean up bad scans and poor-quality pictures, learn special painting tricks, create collages, add gradient fills and strange warps, explore new filters, and make your artistic masterpieces publishing-perfect or Web-ready with Photoshop 5. Plus, 16 pages of full-color examples -- and dozens of black-and-white images -- add to the visual content of this great guide for professional image-makers and amateur artists alike.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (June 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764503928
• ISBN-13: 978-0764503924
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #166,093 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Book But..., December 31, 1999

By	Bruce Caines (New York City) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Photoshop is a very powerful and sometimes ovewhelming application to learn. This book is very helpful in learning the basics and refreshing you on what you know. There are very clear illustrations and directions to get you on the road to understanding the software. It is an excellent reference book for the novice Photoshop user and far better than any documentation provided by Adobe.

My biggest gripe with this book is that it tries so hard to be your friend and use humour (in the tradition of the Dummies series) that the frivolity often got in the way of getting to the point. This is one time I found the the humour to be simply distracting. Humor is good, but learing how to accomplish a task is the reason I buy a manual. If I want a comedy book, I'll look for Photoshop by Al Franken. Next edition I hope they assign an editor with a slightly more liberal use of the proofreading pen.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and thorough but burdened by cornball humor, February 9, 1999

By A Customer

This complete from-the-ground-up guide to dealing with photos in Photoshop 5 is thorough. It provides good background about resolution, pixels, dimensions, colors, and many other things which give the reader the information needed to make intelligent decisions about their graphics for various uses, be they photo printing or web publishing. This is not surprising since the book is authored by Deke McClelland, the author of "The" Photoshop bible. But this book has one major drawback. It believes that because it is written for "dummies" it must therefore be terribly silly. If you can sit and watch a full hour of Bob Sagget talking his way through reruns of Funniest Home Videos, then you won't mind. Others have to wince through these passages to get to the next perls of wisdom. But the wait is always worth it. The book is perhaps a bit too detailed for the quick-how-do-I-do-this crowd and requires a bit of study, perhaps half an hour at a time.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Uneven Book, January 15, 2001

By	Wilhelm G. Hansen (Ithaca, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a newcomer to Adobe PhotoShop, I had high hopes for this book. It is of some limited usefulness but ufortunately it is a very uneven book.

As others have written, the overuse of grade-school level humor detracts somewhat from it. Far worse is the author's practice of glossing over some very basic concepts, such as how to resize an image without noticeable loss of resolution, how to begin work on a new photographic layer and how to "flatten" an image seamlessly. In these and other instances, explainations are sometimes convoluted but seldom clear. Some other techniques are explained well.

This seems to be a book which was written for people who already know quite a bit about PhotoShop, or perhaps was written by a person who is not an especially good teacher.

If there is no other book available, this one will offer some help with the program. But there are several other books on Adobe PhotoShop which offer the newcomer better and clearer instruction.