The Photoshop CS2 Book For Digital Photographers

by Scott Kelby

Book Overview

Scott Kelby, the best-selling Photoshop author in the world today, once again takes this book to a whole new level as he uncovers the latest, most important and most exciting new Adobe Photoshop CS2... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321330625
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Peachpit Pr
• Length: 459 Pages
• Weight: 2.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

This is the Photoshop book to have next to you ...

This is the book to have next to you if you are doing digital photography and feel your images could stand improving, or ... even rescuing. I'm not a Photoshop practitioner or a very good photographer but I do know how to follow directions for tweaking and occasionally salvaging an image. And with sufficient successful rescues, I'm now feeling pretty comfortable with Photoshop and finding my results are really pretty decent. Kelby has a comfortable style and the book is laid out in a logical manner making even your first attempts rewarding. I have two other books on this same subject: one I haven't seen in months, and the other is in a stack somewhere awaiting the time when I can't get satisfactory results with this now dog-eared and well used book. So far, Kelby hasn't let me down. A suggestion if you do buy it or already own it - Keep it close by and refer to it often as I'm constantly discovering more gems of usefulness. I just love the "Advanced" technique for adjusting exposures that starts on page 218 - that alone salvaged many pictures from last Christmas that were underexposed by at least two stops due to a slow cycling flash unit and an impatient photographer. See, told you I wasn't a very good photographer. But with the help of this book, no one will ever know.

Perfect for getting specific jobs done

This book isn't a great general overview of Photoshops capabilities or a theoretical explantion to understand the underpinings of the program. I've bought books like that and still not known what is the best way to convert a color photo to black and white. This book provides an extensive list of real-world issues that photographers have to deal with using Photoshop and step-by-step ways to deal with those problems. It is perfect for those of you who want practical, usable advice to change and improve digital images using this extremely powerful, complex program and don't need to understand Photoshop theory.

Truly readable, truly useful

I did traditional darkroom photography for years before stepping into the digital world several years ago. This is the first truly useful book I've found about Photoshop. Instead of trying to describe individual functions in Photoshop (about as useful as painstakingly describing a fork while leaving it to you to figure out how to actually eat with it), it tells you how to actually do all sorts of common things that experienced photographers want to do, and know that there must be some way of doing, but just can't figure out. It is laid out like a cookbook. If you want to remove dark circles under the eyes, there's an entry for that in the table of contents. If you want to colorize hair, there's another entry, and on and on. Once you get to the actual discussion, the book tells you step-by-step, with lots of illustrations, how to do it. The book assumes you already know your way around photography, but that you don't know anything about Photoshop. The writing is engaging and often funny. The best chapter title (and it sums up my feelings exactly) is "Anger Management: Color Management Step by Step." Although I've now had a fair amount of Photoshop training from actual people, I think this book is clear enough that a Photoshop novice could use it alone and achieve competence.

Paid for itself the first day.

The problem with Photoshop CS2, or any software this extensive, is the enormous amount of time it takes to cull out the overwhelming number of functions it offers to arrive at a working list of the 2 to 3 dozen the serious photographer will actually end up using based on their specific needs. Scott Kelby's book already did that for me saving scores of hours and mental anguish. Problem number two with software like CS2 is the time it takes to learn how to use the short list of features you'll be using. Now you have 2 choices. The manual or Kelby's book. The manual takes you through the process verbally which is very time consuming. While the CS2 book does it graphically, using photo before and afters to illustrate the enhancement, and, most important, walks you through the menus the way they appear on your computer screen. Time expended - Manual vs Kelby book - it's no contest. Say your time is worth $100, $50 or even $25 per hour, you'll probably save more than the price of the book learning just one function. And to those who complained about Scott's little humorous asides I say, "Get a life!" I'll take a photographer with a sense of humor over a software geek anytime. Bill Evans

A MUST for digital photography!

If you use Photoshop CS2 to edit digital images, this book is a must-have. Scott Kelby doesn't waste your time showing you how to do artwork with Photoshop. This book is about digital photography, and it's by far the best book in my library for that. Even if you have Kelby's earlier book on Photoshop CS, there's a lot of new and added material in this book. It's well worth the price to upgrade. In one word: Indispensable.