Adobe Photoshop Elements 6: A Visual Introduction to Digital Photography [With CDROM]

I highly recommend this book with Photoshop elements 6....A great help and easy to understand

Very clear explanations, easy to follow, I'm enjoying learning. I have done some minor things and my confidence is growing. I recommend this book by Philip Andrews strongly.

As the subtitle says, this is an introduction to Adobes' `junior' image editing application. The book itself is well laid out, with sections ranging from introductions to digital photography and Elements itself to printing, file management and some simple projects. It's a good book for dipping into - the sections are easy to navigate with a clear contents page and index to help you find your way around. The graphics used throughout the book are clear and well laid out and illustrate the tools and techniques being described in the text. Screenshots are good and a reasonable size so you can see all the components of a tool or menu. At the moment, it only covers the Windows version - there's no indication of what will happen when the Macintosh version is released later this month. - All the keyboard shortcuts are for Windows, and the `Organizer' workspace is fairly extensively covered - the Mac version will use `Bridge' as featured in CS3, so a relatively major rewrite would be required. However, for users of the previous Windows based Elements version, mention is made where appropriate to equivalent commands in v.5 along with indicators where a particular tool or technique is new to v.6. It should be just possible to apply some of the techniques to older versions of Elements, but I wouldn't recommend buying this book unless you already own or are intending to upgrade to Elements 6. A CD is supplied with the book which has a number of video tutorials covering the new and updated features in v.6 and some of the projects featured in later sections in the book, along with resources for practising the more complex work-throughs - within the text, an indicator is used to show that content is available on the CD. The author also has a web site including video podcasts, tutorials, and loads of additional resources, some for previous Elements versions. I found this to be a very informative book with plenty of material for the new Elements user and a good all round introduction to digital imaging.

Adobe PSE6 A Visual Reference to Digital Photography is a great reference book. Philip Andrews starts at the beginning - "what is digital photography and how does PSE6 help you manipulate digital images" and takes you all the way though the PSE tools to a final chapter usable project. And he does it it an easy to understand manner. Oh, did I mention the keyboard shortcuts appendix? This is a comprehensive book - highly recommended. No, I am not related to, nor have I ever met Mr. Andrews - I just really found this book useful.

After buying Elements 6 and finding it hard to understand (and the Help menu of little help)for a novice like me I purchased the book by Mark Galer titled Elements 6 Maximum Performance. I found the book too difficult to follow and understand although the included DVD was helpful. I then purchased "Visual Introduction ... and found it to be just what I needed to help me put new life into my digital photographs. The included CD whas somewhat disappointing but nonetheless helpful and that is the reason for 4 stars instead of 5. The book takes you from downloading your photo's, organizing them in the Organizer, fixing and editing your photos including underexposure and overexposure. Color correction and changing, cropping, all either automatically or fully manual. Using layers and the tool box. Creating albums and scrapbooks, and fun things like photomerge and stiching, slideshows with music, etc., etc. Excellent step-by-step instruction that is easy to read and understand will take the mystery out of the Elements 6 program. So if you are new to the Elements software like me, a novice like me, and want to know all the in's and out's of Elements 6 like me, then buy this book - like me.