Photoshop 6 Shop Manual

There are so many great Photoshop books out there, but I find this one to be my favorite. Where other Photoshop books concentrate on teaching a few spiffy techniques, they leave you knowing nothing about so many of Photoshop's features.This book, however, takes EVERY menu entry and EVERY pallete option and explains what they do, how to use them, and mistakes to avoid. It concentrates on teaching you what Photoshop can do. At the end of the book are some excellent technique chapters thrown in for good measure, but this book would still be my first choice without them.

This is a breathtakingly useful Photoshop reference for working graphics professionals. Look up any command in Photoshop 6's sprawling interface, and Donnie O'Quinn will tell you exactly what that command can do, when you should use it, when you shouldn't use it, and what you'd better watch out for. There's an immense amount of working knowledge distilled into this book. Open it one day, and you'll learn how to avoid using incorrect PANTONE ink names in your duotones. Next time you look, O'Quinn's reminding you why it no longer makes sense to deactivate selections simply by clicking on screen. Flip to another page, and he's showing how to convert a QuarkXPress document to editable pixels. The breadth is extraordinary. Masking. Color controls. Swatches. Styles. Actions. Layers. Paths. Text. Detailed appendices on automation, selection, cropping, resizing, file conversion, line art and halftone editing, custom ink techniques, and more. There's also a 24-page keyboard shortcut reference. Simply put, Photoshop 6 Shop Manual stands out as an indispensable resource for every print and web professional who wants to get the job done as efficiently and well as possible.

Okay. Here's the deal. This isn't a book. It's a STUNT. It is an act of will. The author seems to say: I will name EVERYTHING in Photoshop, tell you what everything does, explain to you how to use everything and what the things to avoid are. Then I'll organize it all, cross reference it and give you pages of practical examples. Done. There is nothing in here except content. No cute stories, no lame jokes no rambling personal opinions that substitute for facts in so many books on the market. just wall to wall organized content. In short, the book treats you like a professional. It seems like this shouldn't be unusual, but it is. Adobe should bundle the book with the software. It is that comprehensive, authoritative and sensible.

Do you know the meaning of every one of the zillion commands found in Photoshop? No, I thought not. When you want to find out the difference between random or level-based methods in the Extrude Dialog Box, can you immediately turn to that topic in one of your Photoshop Books? The Photoshop 6 Shop Manual is an astounding and necessary volume for a Photoshop library. This encyclopedia lists every command, tool, dialog box, and option found in Photoshop. It lists them, and then describes their usage along with issues to consider in their use and mistakes to avoid. This material uses up the first 700 pages of the book.Next we come upon 230 pages containing 170 techniques which include such things as: correcting fleshtones; colorizing with duotone mode; and evaluating shadows and highlights. Wait, we're not finished yet. The next section contains 23 pages of keyboard shortcuts. I'm used to some small two-sided cardboard list of the shortcuts. I never dreamed there were this many. Next there are 15 pages of color plate, followed by an immense index of topics, and an issue index.A couple of years ago I purchase a book for Photoshop 5 titled "Photoshop in a Nutshell" which pretty much followed the same format. I was disappointed that a version for version 6 never appeared. When I got the Photoshop 6 Shop Manual home I noted that it is by the same author as the Nutshell book. It?s essentially the same book only updated, and with a new title and publisher. Its size is also bigger, going from 632 pages to 1074 pages. If you use Photoshop you simply must have this book...