The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2 (Paperback)

~ (Author) "There are really only a few things that can be done with an image, and they all revolve around changing content..." (more)
Key Phrases: full color management, luminosity layer, embedding profiles, Photoshop Elements, Merge Down, Clone Stamp (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Author Richard Lynch takes Elements farther than you'd ever imagine." -- Sara Froehlich, Northlite Designs

"If you work the examples from front to back your understanding of Elements will go way beyond most." -- Jim McGee, Vivid Light Photography Magazine, VividLight.com

"This release by Richard Lynch may be the one Elements book you should get." -- Adam Bell, DigitalMediaNet.com

Product Description

There's a lot more to Photoshop Elements than meets the eye. In The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements, author and Photoshop expert Richard Lynch lifts the hood to reveal how Photoshop Elements can be used to do some serious, advanced image-correction. The book and and tools (included on the CD) help turn Elements into a far more powerful image editor using many tools that are commonly thought not to be included with the program and many techniques thought to be impossible using Elements. Work with Curves, Color Balance, CMYK, Channels, custom shapes, Color Separations, Snapshots, masking, Calculations, Channel Mixing, one-step digital noise reduction, enhanced sharpening, animation, slices, and more! The book is filled with examples and step-by-step procedures, and all example images are included on the CD so you can work along and learn to use the hidden power. Tools included on the CD provide a simple interface to access incredibly powerful tools that will simplify and change the way you work with images—and consistently improve your final results.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Sybex (January 21, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782141781
• ISBN-13: 978-0782141788
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 7.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #604,622 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

147 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essential working and learning tool for photoshop, January 28, 2003

By	"johnjones2" (Great Falls, VA USA) - See all my reviews

If you're upgrading from one of the ... beginners' image processing programs, and if you're serious about photography you should, "Photoshop 7.0" always comes out on top: the most power, the most sophistication, the best. But few of us can justify a purchase that great for a hobby. So "Photoshop Elements" looks tempting until you try it. Too many of the major tools of the full PS have been stripped out; you can't work with curves, make separations, look at individual color channels, etc., and that hurts.

Well, it turns out you can do all that! Richard Lynch's outstanding "Hidden Power" provides a CD with plug-in tools for "Photoshop Elements" that virtually turns the simpler program into the full package -- at about a quarter of the price.

If that were all Lynch's book did, I would give it 5 stars. But it isn't the whole story or even most of the story. The fact is that "Hidden Power" is just about the best explanation of what those tools do, how color imaging works, and how to use powerful tools to good advantage that I've ever seen. And I've read a lot in 10+ years of manipulating digital images.

Finally, "Hidden Power" includes the most useful tool I've owned for getting past the hardest part: making your printed output look right without spending hundreds of dollars on expensive 'profiling' gear and software. It's a simple file, with the colors recorded in CMYK format, and it's the perfect calibration tool. In one evening it solved completely the difficult problem of getting predictable, neutral-color black and white prints.

Kudos to Lynch. If you go for Photoshop Elements, you have to have "Hidden Power" to go along with it. Accept no substitutes. Give the book a sixth star.

81 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements, February 3, 2003

By	SteveG "sing4u" (St. Louis, Mo.) - See all my reviews

This book is well worth the money for the "Hidden Tools" alone. I consider myself an intermediate user of Photoshop Elements. I have been tempted lately to buy the full-blown Photoshop to gain the additional capabilities. This book and CD gave me most of the additional tools that I thought I was missing.

The book is not written for beginners. You should have a good understanding of how to use Photoshop Elements before diving into this book. Given the scope of this book, I found the first chapter to be a little too basic. I initially found parts of chapter 2 a little confusing. I never use gradient maps and found the explanation in the book to be somewhat confusing. I went back to my "Photoshop for Dummies" book and re-read the portion on gradient maps. This made the light go on for me on what the author was saying in Chapter 2. I found chapters 3, 4 and 5 the most useful. These chapters dealt with the type of image clean-up I encounter most often. These chapters dealt with curves, which I knew was a feature I missed in Photoshop Elements. Chapter 5 showed some great uses of the History Brush, another missing tool from Photoshop Elements that you get on the CD in the Hidden Tools. The remainder of the book gave some good hints on how to improve your images as well.

I read the whole book, but I am sure that not all was absorbed. I will keep this book close to my computer to use as a reference as I try to fix those difficult to correct images.

The author of the book has made himself available to answer questions on several Photoshop Elements and retouching forums. I highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to go beyond the basics of what is available in Photoshop Elements.

78 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed: Good tools, Poor editing, October 30, 2003

By	Darwin's Bulldog (Upstate New York) - See all my reviews

If you scan through the previous reviews, you will find that those folks who are familiar with the full version of Photoshop are raving about the tools provided and explained in this book. The beginning Photoshop Elements users are having a great deal of trouble. The reason: experienced users are not following along with the examples and the newbies are.

Fact is, there are a large number of mistakes remaining in the book, even if you were able to find the errata on the author's book site. For example, the first big project leads you through creating color separations. There are two errors in the step-by-step instructions. One step for each is a +120 hue adjustment and the next should be -120 but the minus sign is missing. Users will find that they repeated the previous step and do not get the desired result. Additionally, the step changing one of the layer blend modes to 'screen' is omitted for each primary. The user will never get the greyscale result.

There are numerous other editing problems as well. Stuff listed as appearing in the appendix is actually in the tools, and at least one of the practice files is named incorrectly. There are numerous small linguistic errors, such as using the word 'effect' when the word 'affect' is correct. Clearly this book was rushed into print before many aspects were finalized.

That said, the tools are in fact very valuable, and the book goes well beyong simple follow-the-instructions explanation of Photoshop Elements. This sets this book apart from most others; you will know not only 'How' but 'Why'. I would recommend this as a second book to anyone who has some experience with Elements and can recognize why some of the practice instructions are not working correctly. They will also better appreciate the value of the tools.

While this book has a special section for color plates that are important for following the instructions, my impression is that a number of publishers are producing comparable yet cheaper books using color throughout.

For the first time Photoshop Elements user, I would heartily recommend Scott Kelby's book "The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers". (New Riders) This book more than covers the basics of photo retouching and enhancement and is extremely fun to read. Every page is a full color page and it's $10 bucks cheaper. You will enjoy the book and will enjoy Elements even more.

To Richard Lynch: Your work is a valuable contribution to the Photoshop community. Find a better publisher!