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This book is an excellent tool for learning how to use Adobe Photoshop 5 for Macintosh and Windows. The writers--actually a team from Adobe--guide you through the basic and advanced tasks of using the image editor and paint program to create and enhance a wide variety of photographs and images.
You don't need to know the previous versions of the program to get right to work. You use the practice files on the included hybrid CD-ROM as you follow the lessons throughout the book. There are step-by-step instructions, explanations of features, and plenty of illustrations to help you as you work, and each chapter has review questions and answers.
First you learn the basics of the interface as you tour the options for selecting, using layers and filters, painting, retouching, and saving files. Next, you learn the essentials of opening files, navigating the interface, getting help, and creating layers and selections. After that the chapters get much more specific, teaching you how to use the paint, editing, and pen tools; work with selections, masks, channels, and layers; and apply photo-retouching techniques and special effects. You also learn how to combine graphics from Adobe Illustrator with those from Photoshop, prepare images for the Web, manage two-color print jobs, and fine-tune color preferences for ideal output. The projects involve both fine art and commercial art---everything from composite images to color-corrected photographs. Finally, you work with Adobe ImageReady 1.0, the new package for creating images and animations for the Web and other multimedia projects.
A full-color section shows you the finished artwork from the various chapters, color models, and, in a few cases, the various versions of an image as you apply changes to it. This section also shows you how to use all the Toolbox tools, including the selection, paint, stamp, sharpen, sponge, pen, type, gradient, eyedropper, zoom, and measure tools. This section is particularly helpful for users who are trying to get up to speed with Photoshop's many features. This tutorial will take you well past basic interface issues and have you creating some pretty amazing images.
From Library Journal
Both of these Adobe books are excellent self-paced training guides; they would also make excellent in-class texts for anyone teaching these tools. Less well-known than Photoshop, Premier allows the manipulation and editing of multimedia, including video, animation, and static graphics. The CD-ROMs include all examples and lesson files, but you will need your own copies of the programs actually to use the lessons. The Photoshop book includes coverage of Adobe's new product for web graphics, ImageReady, and given Photoshop's broad popularity, it belongs in most collections. Premier is for larger collections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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