Adobe Photoshop Cs3 One-On-One [With DVD ROM]

As a person who has been familiar with various aspects of Photoshop for years, I was unsure if this book would give me the information that I wanted to learn. I've been able to learn various tasks that can be done in Photoshop, but these have been very limited and I've wanted to take my skills to a higher level. Also, as someone who dabbles in digital photography, I'm also interested in learning new skills to help me reproduce my images. This book is excellent! Not only is the book flat out gorgeous to look at and thumb through, with full color on virtually every page, I found the addition of the DVD tutorials extremely helpful and well done. There are almost 3 hours of video, and for a visual learner such as myself I found it invaluable to watch the video first and then follow along with the book at my own pace. As you likely already know, Photoshop is an extremely complex software and it is not a very intuitive one at that, at least until you get to know your way around. Adobe CS3 one-on-one will help you tremendously if you are new to the program. I found that I learned a ton of new stuff and had a great refresher for things I had already learned in the past. When I'm asked by friends or family what book to use to learn Photoshop, this is the one! You will not be disappointed.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One This book is a great way to learn Photoshop CS3. The book has twelve lessons, which are essentially the like the chapters of most books. A DVD comes with the book. It contains all the sample images used in the lessons, and 13 tutorial videos, which are more than a replay of the info contained in the book. They have a lot of information packed into them, and you will need to pay close attention. They are of great value in showing you how to call up various commands in the Photoshop window. The book is printed in color throughout, on quality paper, so you really can see those subtle differences described in the text. but the book is more than just a series of lessons-there are extensive explanations of many important aspects of digital photography and image manipulation. I especially appreciated the discussion of color. To learn the program effectively, you will need to work through the lessons. You can also spend many leisurely evenings just browsing the book, and also viewing the video tutorials. If you are serious about your image work, yet want to avoid the tedium of endless study, get this book, written by Photoshop expert Deke McClelland.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on_One is intended for independent learning of Photoshop, for a student in a a classroom, or for use by a classroom instructor. It works for Windows as well as Macintosh computers. I recommend it highly for all three purposes. At the beginning of each of the 12 lessons you watch a 10 to 17 minute video lesson showing the key concepts. They make more sense when first seen in action. Deke McClelland has prepared these videos with lynda.com so their quality is the highest. The DVD also contains the material for all the lessons. First watch the video which explains major concepts, second do The lesson following step by step procedures, third review and test your knowledge. The projects are interesting. The step-by-step tutorials are easy to follow. And, the explanations oI important concepts are clear and easy to understand. The instructions for the new Bridge are, like the rest of the book, excellent. Following them, I created a new workspace that I use daily. Did you know that if you reorganize your thumbnails, Bridge automatically saves this sort? If you then do a sort, say by filename, you can use View > Sort > Manually to return to your custom sort. <br /> <br />The newest CS3 things are included in this edition, such as the ability to convert Shadow and Highlight Adjustment to a smart filter and use in nondestructively in a layer as if it were a layer adjustment. <br /> <br />When I first reviewed Photoshop CS One-on-One for our NVMUG user group, I used Photoshop Elements for the review. As soon as I was able to upgrade to Photoshop CS I bought my own copy. It was a great way to learn, and is one of my most prized books. <br /> <br />I should not have been so eager to start the next tutorial when I was studying the book, and shoould have stopped to explore using each lesson on a project of my own. <br /> <br />I did find a couple of what I believe are very minor errors. Page 13 says to" select Automatically Export Caches to Folders When Possible under Advanced" - I found it under Cache. And, some of the Navigation techniques talked about in the video were not accompanied by screen shots. <br /> <br />This book is intended for someone who wants to learn Photoshop, not just to upgrade from earlier versions, so it does not distinguish between what is new in CS3 and what was in earlier versions. <br /> <br />This is a great book to study if you want to learn Photoshop CS3.

This book provides excellent instruction in the use of Photoshop CS3 for those who've never used Photoshop before. The book includes a CD, with quick time movies, and images to use in conjunction with the lessons in the book. The book's method is to introduce each chapter with a movie of about fifteen minutes. The author then provides tutorials on each subject, such as say, masking, that require the reader to upload one or more images into Adobe Photoshop CS3, and then to perform a series of steps to process that image, with emphasis on the use of the tools covered by that chapter. McClelland writes clearly and is easily understood, and the book is profusely illustrated, with screen saves that show almost every step along the way. To benefit the most, you must follow the tutorials from beginning to end, working at your computer. This is made even more important by the fact that Photoshop techniques that don't fall into a major category, like moving all or part of an image, are introduced in the chapters on the major categories, like creating and applying a mask. One of the main problems of any Photoshop book is that that a single image will usually involve several different functions, like tone adjustment, color correction and sharpening to optimize. Yet the material must be presented one step at a time, so that it may take many hours of work before one understands how to process a single image. This is even more true in this book's case, where McClelland will discuss a single process in progressively more complex variations in a single chapter. The beginner who is anxious to show his work may find it difficult to labor through all of the exercises before he can present a picture. A second problem is created by Photoshop itself, which is a tool for both photographers and graphic designers. The author often presents matters that are of little interest to the former, but of high concern to the latter. Moreover there are certain tools that are of special interest to photographers that are not covered in great detail, like the use of Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe's front end to Photoshop. If you are a photographer interested in quickly learning to get images processed, you might be more interested in one of the PS CS3 books aimed specifically at photographers, like Tim Grey's "Photoshop CS3 Workflow". If you are already an experienced Photoshop user who just wants to learn what's new in CS3, Ben Willmore's "Adobe Photoshop CS3: Up to Speed" is for you. What's clear is that you probably will need to read many books before you feel you are getting the most from Photoshop. Finally this book does not cover the 4.1 update to Camera Raw. If you want to learn PS CS3 in all its variations, this is an excellent book, providing one recognizes that it will require a commitment of time and effort. If that is your goal, this book will do a fine job.

§ It has been a long while since I have been as enthusiastic about a book as this one. Deke McClelland has targeted my demographic with a practiced eye: people who use Photoshop and who want to use it more -- but who are completely intimidated and lost in the bowels of that "vast and ungainly behemoth." It helps that the author, who clearly loves this tool, maintains a refreshing irreverence toward it. The book is organized in a "Read - Watch - Do" way. The "watch" part comes from the 3 hours of instructional video that is included with the book DVD. The DVD also contains example files and other material that McClelland shows how to use to set up your copy of Photoshop in the most useful manner. The instructional videos blew me away with their information density. There is incredible content here. So far going through the book, I found it valuable to watch each more than once. The video material does not repeat the written instruction -- it complements it. The book itself is beautiful and well-organized. It has a wide format that lies flat to make following along while at the mouse or keyboard easier. It is 500 pages long but is not overwhelming, like a reference. All the material is encompassed in 12 lessons. These 12 lessons teach the basic skills needed to use the tool effectively whether your focus is the Web or print. A note of interest to those who have not upgraded to CS3 yet: I noticed in sharing this book that people with CS2 will be quite comfortable following along. The author clears away whatever obstacles may come up for you. One last note: I know the editorial review above says there are only 2 hours of video with the book, not 3 as I stated. I have no idea why they rounded off 2 hours and 54 minutes that way. I guess they figured, as I do, that the features of this book could be understated and still be worthy of superlatives. §