Adobe Photoshop CS3: The Official Training Workbook from Adobe Systems [With CDROM]

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book is a beneficial book for both newcomers to the Photoshop world as well as seasoned Photoshop users. The book is divided into individual lessons -- beginning with a basic introduction to the Photoshop work area including the menu bar, tool bar and palettes, and concluding with a discussion of printing and color space. An enclosed CD contains all the image files needed to follow along with each lessons. Every lesson folder contains a completed image indicating your goal, a starting image to work from, as well as any complimentary images needed. I am a self-taught Photoshop user, and I hoped this book would teach me more technically efficient ways to use filters, layers, and masked. I was pleased with the methods recommended by the authors, as well as happy to learn many new image editing tools. Each lesson thoroughly covers the intended subject area. I particularly liked the organization of this book. All lessons (chapters) in the book are taught using the same format, so you get into a routine as you peruse through the book. Every chapter begins with an estimated time to complete the lesson, and I thought the time estimate was realistic. There is a lot of subject matter included in this 478 page book, so plan to take your time if you want to cover every lesson. This book works better as a teaching tool, than a desktop reference manual. I highly recommend this book to Photoshop beginners because of the thorough step-by-step approach to learning the material, as well as intermediate Photoshop users who will learn many new techniques. Both PC and MAC commands are clearly stated.

The book comes with a CD of images for the lessons and video examples. Even though I have used PS for years, I rolled up my sleeves and did every lesson in order -- except the last two, which pertain to video and commercial printing which don't interest me. Even with my experience I was constantly saying, ,"I didn't know you could do that!" The book is clearly written and beautifully illustrated. An excellent introductory Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Bookonce-over to help you get a grip on the power of PS and to point the way to further experimentation.

I found this to be a very good book.But there are places in the book were some steps are left out.But usually you can figure it out.All in all i would say it is an excellent book to get you familiar with the different capabilities of cs3

This book works through a series of well-chosen examples that illustrate the power of Photoshop. It is liberally illustrated with color pictures of the work in progress and screen shots of dialog boxes. On the more complicated transformations these help reassure you as you work along with the book that you are going in the right direction. The book is designed to appeal to a wide audience, but is aimed mostly at serious photographers and graphic designers, including those without previous Photoshop experience. It emphasizes the precise control you can get without much effort using Photoshop (it mentions the built-in automatic corrections but doesn't use them). The book is probably not for casual users: they will be using the much cheaper Photoshop Elements and not Photoshop CS3. The most valuable parts for me are the two chapters on enhancing and correcting photographs. There is also a lot of information aimed at graphic designers, such as many detailed examples on compositing images and text, a chapter on vector drawing, and a chapter on designing a comp of a 3-D package. The book touches on some of the Photoshop Extended features. The CD includes several short training videos focusing on the new features in CS3. The book is very well written and I learned a lot from it. I only have a couple of gripes. Some of the filters and adjustments in Photoshop have zillions of numerical settings and it's not clear to the novice how to choose the settings or even what the settings mean. This book glosses over this problem: the lesson steps give you the best settings but don't explain where they come from, so you are momentarily reduced to a do-it-yourself demo instead of a learning experience. Smart filters (new in CS3) and adjustment layers are explained well, but they are only used in a couple of places in the examples.

Adobe has released the new upgrade for Photoshop CS3 and a new version called Photoshop CS3 Extended. Whether you get Photoshop as a single product or as part of the Adobe Creative Suite 3, this book by the Adobe Creative Team is the latest edition of the official training series for Adobe software and covers both versions of Photoshop. As in previous editions, this book contains lessons that will help both the novice and advanced user get up to speed with the new upgrade. For the novice, the authors cover the basics of Photoshop and the advanced users will want to check out the lessons for the new features. Each lesson has step-by-step instructions and accompanying image files that give you hands on practice. At the end of each chapter is a Q & A review. Within the chapters are tips and techniques from Photoshop professionals Julieanne Kost and Russell Brown. Some of the new features and tools covered in the book include Smart Filters and the Quick Selection tool. Other lessons teach you how to take advantage of the improvements to your favorite tools such as Camera Raw and Adobe Bridge. As you would expect, the authors begin by discussing the workspace's new layout which has several improvements to help you streamline your work. The next few chapters cover the basics of photo correction, retouch and repair. You will also learn how to create a PDF presentation and how to use the Adobe Lightroom. Next, the authors move on to discuss the many ways to make selections. They discuss some of your old favorite selection tools and new additions such as the Quick Selection tool. I especially enjoyed the sample projects that were more interesting than usual in a book such as this. In one chapter the authors used an example scrapbook page to show how to use layers to organize the objects on the page and how to work with layer comps and blend modes. The next project was a book cover which the authors used to teach masks and channels. You will learn how to create temporary Quick Masks, store a mask as an alpha channel and how to use filters, effects and blend modes with masks. Working with type in Photoshop is one of my favorite tasks and the authors use a poster as a sample project for this chapter. They cover the Type palette, paths, shapes and Smart Objects. I especially liked the lesson about applying text to a complex path. If you have never tried your hand at the Photoshop vector drawing tools, you will enjoy the chapter which covers drawing paths with the Pen tool, layer shapes and more. Advanced layers is next and the authors show you how to use adjustment layers and the Vanishing Point grid to achieve a 3D effect for product package design. Next, you will create a four image montage and learn about advanced compositing. In this chapter, you will also learn about automating a series of steps to speed up your workflow. Photoshop is still the best when it comes to creating and optimizing images for the web. You will learn several tasks including