The Adobe Photoshop Cs3 Book for Digital Photographers

1. I've read / owned a lot of various photoshop books; most are pretty good, some terrible--> but Scott Kelby's books are always the best. <br /> <br />2. The layout is simple, the language is clear, the steps are clearly written. <br /> <br />3. If you're a photoshop user from beginner up to moderate advanced, this book should be a no-brainer purchase. Anyone with a high level of photoshop knowledge will know everything in this book and thus should look to more indepth tomes.

I recently completed a class at a local Art and Craft institution on Photoshop. It gave me a good foundation, but the version they used was CS. This book on CS3 has been an invaluable aid to me, building on what I learned in the class and also introducing features I didn't know existed. Some reviewers slam Kilby for his humor, I tend to agree there may be too much there for some people, but I also enjoyed the conversational tone and one on one feel of the author's writing. I found the book to be very informative and it will remain at the side of my workstation for a long time to come for reference as I am one who needs to repeat tasks several times to master and remember them. What is nice about this book is there are specific recommendations for different settings and techinques. Material you can actually use to make things work for you. Once you understand the process you can certainly vary the settings and experiment - which is what we all should do, but it's nice to have a really good place to start. All in all, a very good book for a serious photographer who is working on learning how to best utilize Photoshop.

Am I a Scott Kelby fan? You bet I am! Not because he is a great instructor (which he is) but because he continues to produce books that inform, instruct, entertain, and most importantly, improve my skills as a photographer and user of Adobe Photoshop. This newest, soon to be classic, book is packed so full of useful information that you'll go back to it again and again. If you're looking for in depth discussions of the tools and technologies of Photoshop CS3 like what is Lab color and what does it do, then go look elsewhere. But if you want to know how to use Lab to improve your color saturation or give your image some amazing sharpness then you have found the right book. At 460+ pages, this book is no light weight. You will learn how to use every tool and menu that could possibly be used to enhance your digital photography. Want to know how to make great looking prints? It's in there. Want to know how to resize your images properly, get better flesh tones and smoother skin in your portraits, do you have a desire to make beautiful black and white images and then turn them into spectacular gallery prints? Yup, it's all in there. If that's not enough, Mr. Kelby has also included 4 on-line chapters that you can turn to for even more great tips, and tutorials that were covered in the previous Photoshop for Digital Photographers books but have been updated for CS3. Every lesson in the book is step by step and easy to follow. You can learn at your own pace and even skip around from chapter to chapter to find just that little nugget that you have been searching for to improve your photos. By the way, you might read some reviews about Scott infusing his sense of humor into the book which, in my opinion, is a welcome change from all of the dry, textbook-like Photoshop manuals out there on the market. If that's not your thing, just skip the first page of each chapter and jump into the juicy goodness of the step by step techniques. Bottom line, you want better pictures to come from your digital camera? Just buy the book, you can thank me later!

This is Scott Kelby's revised edition of his Photoshop for Photographers series covering CS3, but don't be fooled in thinking that it's just as the previous version with a few added extras. Not only does this book cover the new features of CS3 which are mainly relevant to photographers, it's packed with all new techniques for retouching and finally presenting your images. Since the last edition, it's clear that Scott Kelby has been studying his craft hard. The book is full, cover to cover with beautiful photographs, taken by him, which are motivating by themselves. Amongst the many, two techniques which stand out to give superb results are what he calls the Trendy High Contrast Portrait Effect and the Hollywood Highlights technique. The book is written in Scott's easy going humerous style, and yes there are people that don't relate to his sense of humour, but then you can't please everyone. That being said, if you don't like the humour, then do yourself a favour and look past it, cos amongst it is some of the most valuable information, we as photographers need if we want to keep 'up there'. Covering everything from the Bridge, color correcting, enhancements, presentation and more, as I've said this book is a MUST HAVE for photographers of all levels. Oh and incase you were wondering, 'no' I'm not on commission ... I just like to spend my money wisely!

I've bought Scott's Digital Photography books since version 7. This one tops them all and I've only had one evening to peruse the pages. I've been keeping up with video/written tutorials of CS3 but Scott, you've out done yourself my friend, you've thrown in lots of tidbits I haven't seen. Since I'm self taught using your books, NAPP website and tutorials I depend on you. Don't forget to read the Intro/Q & A section to get the "extras". Thanks again for all you do with Photoshop Scott, we your fans appreciate you! Dr. David Jones Muskogee, OK