Product Description

Unleash the hidden potential for professional image editing in Adobe® Photoshop® Elements with this project-based, real-world guide.

Using step-by-step instructions and accompanying movie tutorials, Mark Galer leads you through the less well-known and most powerful post-production editing techniques Adobe® Photoshop® Elements has to offer. Cunning tricks and clever workarounds help you to create professional images without features from the full Adobe® Photoshop® package that you need but don't want to pay for - perform tasks you didn't think were possible in Adobe® Photoshop® Elements!

Whether you're an imaging professional or a photography enthusiast, this book will help you get the maximum performance from your software. Learn how to:
* Create striking effects with no commercial lighting or studio equipment
* Extend the dynamic range of your digital camera by merging multiple exposures
* Optimize, enhance and montage images with stunning results

The accompanying DVD provides extensive support with movie tutorials for all projects, high resolution images, multilayered files of completed projects, a stock library and a keyboard shortcut guide.

Mark Galer is a freelance photographer, accomplished lecturer and best-selling author of number books on photography. He is an official Adobe Ambassador for Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe® Photoshop® Elements.

* Save money by unleashing the hidden potential of Elements for professional image editing rather than upgrading to the full Photoshop software
* Practical, step-by-step projects show you how to solve real-world problems and create stunning
images using clever workarounds and powerful, little-known techniques
* Free DVD includes more than 5 hours of tutorials, image files, a stock library and keyboard shortcut guide - worth the cover price alone!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109100 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Review
"Using crafty work-arounds to achieve remarkable results, Mark Galer pushes Elements' capabilities to new levels." Christy Brandt, Director of Engineering, Photoshop Elements, Adobe Systems, Inc. (On Previous Edition)

"Elements 5.0 Maximum Performance has great techniques to get the most out of Elements. If you are a digital photographer using Elements for your image editing, this book is a great addition to your library." Richard Coencas, Photoshop Elements Quality Engineer, Adobe Systems, Inc. (On Previous Edition)

"Well written, well illustrated, with a good knack for explaining complex issues in a non-threatening and comprehensible manner." Steve Caplin, digital artist and author of "How to Cheat in Photoshop". (On Previous Edition)

"Truly Maximum Performance! This book has propelled my knowledge of Photoshop Elements to a very high competent professional level. I cannot express my absolute delight with my new skills."
Richard McWhorter, author, USA (On Previous Edition)

"A great book to learn with...Stuffed with expert performance tips" Tim Daly, photographer, UK (On Previous Edition)

"This book is for those who have the Elements basics down and want to make it fly; it allows a photographer to use Elements as a serious contender to full Photoshop."
Sara Froelich, Elements Instructor, USA (On Previous Edition)

A Great Book and DVD Combination!
"I have learned more from watching (and rewatching) the videos than I did at a $400 two-day Photoshop Workshop" V. Hutson, USA (On Previous Edition)

About the Author
Mark Galer is a Senior Lecturer in photography at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. He is also co-writer and teacher on their new online photography courses. He has lectured in photography in the UK and Australia and has worked commercially as a freelance photographer on corporate and editorial assignments. He has written numerous top-selling photography books, including Photography Foundations for Art & Design, Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 Maximum Performance and Digital Photography in Available Light. He is an Official Adobe Ambassador for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Customer Reviews

High quality, unexpected possibilities with Elements, wealth of educational material


If you're a beginner with Photoshop Elements, this is not a book for you. But if you know the essentials and want to deepen and extend your knowledge and use of the program, I don't think you can find a better guide than Mark Galer with his book Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, maximum performance. By the way except for one project the book is also very useful for version 5

The book itself uses large, clear pictures. It shows quality of itself.
It is not directed to describing the tools of Elements, but to really enhancing photographs for optimum quality using available tools. You get 25 so called projects, a kind of long exercises where the author explains what he wants to achieve and how it is done. The used pictures are all available to do it yourself.

In one instance (improving contrast) even 4 methods are completely explained. Never heard of using colour channels in Elements? Mark Galer shows us what for and how to. And I at least got very excited! At the end of a project a finished example is printed intended to be made by applying what was learnt in the project.
Selections are nice but have them `made by Elements' itself using masks is easier and better. And there are a lot of examples how to do that in the book.

If the text it not clear enough, then there is a DVD in the book, providing complete videos showing and explaining every step of each project. You get here more detailed explanation than in the book. I think the combination of text and videos is a real winner.

Of course you can mimic exactly what is described. You get all used pictures in high resolution, in JPG, TIF and PSD format. Many in RAW. The PSD format displays all layers the way they should at the end of the exercise. And besides that you get a lot of other pictures, e.g. a lot of skies and sand beaches, and so on. Totalling 3,4 GB!

I also like the fact Mark Galer being a photographer himself gives you a lot of useful photographic advices and many performance tips spread over the book.

Surely, it is not a novel, rather a study book. Depending on your previous knowledge you will have to use your proper brains more or less. And relook at the videos if you missed something in the text.
Mark Galer writes fluently, with a nice bit of humour.

When you are through the book, you will take it again from time to time to refresh things. Each project standing on its own, this is made easy.
Personally I'd like to find more about the "whys" and "why not another way". Though the videos provide part of this. Now about 300 pages. Therefore a bit more would not harm.

Maximum Performance really sums this book up
On the cover it says maximum performance and that sums up perfectly what you get inside. It is packed with some of the most interesting techniques and clever workarounds that I have come across and it really helped me discover just what hidden depths Elements has. I found many things that up to now I thought had only been achievable in the full version of Photoshop and it was a real revelation to discover that Elements has these capabilities too.

The book itself is split into 3 sections:

1. OPTIMIZE ... which contains projects on Crop and Correct, Levels, Camera Raw, Contrast, Hue & Saturation, Sharpening and Printing.

2. ENHANCE ... with projects on Depth of Field, Shafts of Light, Black and White, Toning, Character Portraits, Glamour Portraits, Motion Blur, Low Key and Channels.

3. MONTAGE .. containing projects on Creative Montage, Replacing a Sky, High Dynamic Range, Creative Type, Displacement, Preserving Shadow, Photomerge and Hair Transplant.

Also included is a DVD which as well as containing over five hours of movie tutorials also has numerous images that you can use to practice the techniques plus layer styles, gradients and actions to help you achieve some of the effects shown in the book. There are also detailed easy to follow instruction on how to install these into Elements and this makes the whole process quite simple.

The book covers so many diverse techniques and really is a pleasure to use, its easy to read, well written and explains in detail how to achieve the best results. For example, Camera Raw has always been a total mystery to me but the clear information and instructions contained in the book have made me much more confident in using it and my images are now far better than they were before.

I'm a long time user of Elements but I gained just so much from these excellent projects and have discovered all sorts of tips and workarounds that I just hadn't come across before. Once I had picked up the book I found it difficult to put down. The book and DVD really are a treasure trove of information for creating stunning images.

High end techniques for Adobe's budget imaging app
This is slightly unusual in for a photography book as it's project based. Think of it as an extended set of the sort of tutorials you find in the digital photo magazines.

It's split into 3 sections with overall headings of "Optimize" "Enhance" and "Montage" with individual chapters each covering a particular technique in Elements 6.

A DVD is included with video and image resources covering all the projects (which is unusual) - 5 hours of video and high quality images (including RAW and PSD with all layers). There are also some potentially useful actions (I haven't got round to using these yet, as I'm running the Macintosh beta version, and haven't figured out how to install them!)

As with all the most recent Elements publications I've seen, this is based around the Windows version, but it doesn't seem to be so focussed - I found no problems following the projects on a MacBook, as there is less emphasis on keyboard shortcuts in the text, and the menus and interfaces are pretty much the same for each platform.

Mark Galer writes in a style that I find refreshing - it's witty without detracting from the technical content, and I found that the techniques 'stuck' very quickly without repeated re-reading.

Unusually these days (or so it seems) there's no accompanying website for the book, but I didn't find this detracted from the overall experience, perhaps because the DVD content is so comprehensive.

If you're a newcomer to Elements this isn't the book for you - it's not going to teach you how to navigate the interface - I don't think that there's any one image in the book that shows the whole screen - but if you want to learn some more high end techniques which you may not expect possible from Adobe's budget app then you may want to consider buying it.