Photoshop 5 Bible: Gold Edition (Hardcover)

by Deke McClelland (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Photoshop 5 Bible: Gold Edition employs graphically rich material, well-thought-out tutorials, and artist interviews to give Photoshop users a complete and often inspiring look at the photo-and-image-manipulating software's capabilities. In addition, the book makes the gold standard with the inclusion of two CD-ROMs with images, utilities such as filters, artist biographies, and further Photoshop documentation.

Attractive to Photoshop users of all levels, Gold Edition begins with four fairly rudimentary chapters covering the fundamentals of the software usage--including navigating the user interface--and introductions to many of its tools. Beyond this section, the book focuses on demonstrating specific task, tool, and feature groups such as retouching, layers, and special effects.

In the section dedicated to special effects, the book illustrates processes such as color correction and making composite images by using sample photographs in conjunction with an adjustment of the related software component. This way, readers actually see the differences the adjustments should make instead of simply getting a description of the change.

Inspiration infuses the text with full-color glossy images and interviews with the artists who created them. One of the best chapters is "Inventing Photo-Realistic Worlds." Focused on Eric Chauvin, an Industrial Light and Magic alumnus and freelance film and television matte painter, the chapter discusses how Chauvin uses Photoshop on Babylon 5 projects. Chauvin also walks through the process work he did on the digitally enhanced rerelease of the first three Star Wars films.

With its stunningly produced images, hands-on learning style, and abundant input from computer graphics industry all-stars, Photoshop 5 Bible: Gold Edition delivers comprehensive and valuable reference material. --Ryan Kuykendall

Product Description
With brand-new sections on cutting-edge Photoshop techniques used by leading computer graphics professionals around the world, plus 270 pages of stunning color artwork, this new edition of the internationally acclaimed Photoshop 5 Bible is truly the gold standard in Photoshop reference books. Once more, digital graphics guru Deke McClelland delivers the most comprehensive, informative, and entertaining coverage of Photoshop you'll find anywhere -- complete with all the insider secrets and tricks you need for state-of-the-art graphic design.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 944 pages
• Publisher: Hungry Minds (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076453372X
• ISBN-13: 978-0764533723
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,571,866 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't get the Gold edition, March 24, 2000

By	Zera Fine (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

The gold edition has more color, but less useful information. I got the Gold edition after seeing the paperback in the bookstore. I ordered the Gold edition thinking that it'd be nice to have a hardcover for $2 more...but then was completely disappointed when I saw what they'd done to the content. I'd used the book before, and the regular edition is much better. There's just more in it. I'd give the paperback four stars. I can't believe they took a good book and made it worse with packaging. It just doesn't make sense.

I ended up returning the book and buying the paperback at the local store -- the book cost more, but I got the right one. Oh, and I lost postage on the return too. Don't fall for it.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Photoshop Reference, December 13, 1999

By	Frank Sinkavich (York, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Photoshop 5 Bible, Gold Edition is a well written, easily understandable text that no serious Photoshop user should be without. The book covers all aspects of Photoshop starting with the fundamentals all the way through to digital photography and web site design. The color illustrations are very helpful. In addition, the author discusses color management in detail. I would recommend Photoshop 5 Bible, Gold Edition to any Photoshop user who wants to get the most from Photoshop and produce great digital photos.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a comprehensive book, but could be much better written, August 7, 2000

By	+++ (CA, United States) - See all my reviews

All books on computer software can generally be divided in two groups: manuals, which describe all features of the program in a condensed (encyclopedic) form, and tutorials, which guide the readers through a sequence of steps to teach them how to perform either basic or advanced functions. Good manuals are concise, accurate, and comprehensive. They can be used over and over again to look up the necessary function or keyboard shortcut. Tutorials are usually wordy, cover only selected functions of the program, but frequently go far beyond the basics by showing examples how to achieve non-trivial effects. A large number of exercises is a must for a tutorial.

The problem of "Photoshop Bible" is that although this book is essentially a manual, it is written in the wordy style of a tutorial; on the other hand, it is not quite up to the standards of tutorials either. It is a manual because with a very few exceptions it only discusses the functions and applications of each single menu item of Photoshop. To be fair, I must admit that this it is done on a very detailed level, which makes this book one of the most information-filled and comprehensive guides on Photoshop. I was truly impressed by the author's level of knowledge and experience with Photoshop. The problem is that the book is not particularly reader-friendly: it takes enormous effort and time to digest and memorize all those practical tips and tricks offered by Deke McClelland. There are reasons for that. To begin with, the book is poorly organized. The first 300 pages or so are mostly useless and deserve to be in the appendix. I bet that 95% of average Photoshop users will never see pantone swatches, will never try duotone printing, and will not spent any significant time importing all these graphics formats that Photoshop can read. Recording scripts and 15-page-long table of shortcuts probably should not be on the first pages, either. Nonetheless, all this stuff takes the first third of the book. One can easily get bored before getting to the real stuff. Another thing that bugged me a lot are tutorial files. The books comes with a CD-ROM, and it does contain some tutorial files, but they are very well hidden in the directory structure among other pieces or Photoshop artwork. Furthermore, neither their names nor the folder name suggest that they are tutorials. I discovered them accidentally when I was on the page 400 or so. Apparently, the author's idea was that the readers should realize what kind of fools they are only at the very end since the first page where these tutorial files are mentioned is the LAST page of the text. About 800 preceding pages NEVER mention a single name of a tutorial file, and it is up to the reader to figure out whether a particular picture is included as a file, what the name of this file is, and where to find it on the disk. The fact that all files need type and color space conversion, and that their resolution appears to be much higher than the one use by the author, so if the book says "feature the selection by 2 pixels", you should probably go for 10 to reach a similar effect, only adds to the confusion. The bootom line is that even if you find and use all tutorial files on the CD-ROM, they are still not sufficient to learn everything by doing. I spent 6 weeks reading this book every evening, I learned a lot, but I got overwhelmed to an even greater extent.

My personal opinion: The author probably spent at least a year putting this huge book together. He has done a great work, but he left it unfinished. Had he spent another month rearranging the chapters and preparing the tutorial files and practical exercises to meet the readers expectations (and the standards of computer literature), it would be a fantastic book. In its present form, I am not sure that it is worth spending your money, and most important, your time. This book dumps lots of data on you, but does not help you much to learn it.