Product Description

If you’re a photography hobbyist, would you like to brighten up that gloomy island vacation photo? Slim down without going on a diet? See whether white or green shutters look best on the house? Expunge the ex–boyfriend from family photos?

If you’re a pro or semi–pro photographer, would you like to make it snow in that ski resort photo?  Replace the old logo in the glamour shot of the corporate headquarters with the new one?  Grow hair in the CEO’s glaring bald spot?  Freshen up the lettuce in that food shot?

You’ve come to the right place. With Photoshop CS2, you have the tools. With Photoshop CS2 For Dummies, you’ll have the know–how.  In full color, with all kinds of examples, screen shots, step–by–step explanations, tips, and techniques, this guide takes you from the fundamentals to special power–user tricks! Cross–platform Mac–PC coverage includes:

• The basics of getting around in Photoshop, getting images into and out of Photoshop, choosing the right file formats, and setting your preferences
• Working with Adobe Bridge to organize and manage your images
• Working with tonality, including making easy Auto Repairs, making adjustments with Levels and Curves (and the eyedroppers), and using Shadow/Highlight and the toning tools, Burn and Dodge
• Making color look natural using the color adjustment commands
• Taking advantage of the RAW format for maximum flexibility, including using the Adjust, Detail, Lens, Curve, and Calibrate tabs and the Camera Raw buttons
• Fine–tuning your fixes, including making your selections with tools (four marquee tools, three lasso tools, and the Magic Wand tool) 
• Masking for both layer visibility and for protecting parts of your images
• The most common problems in digital photos—red–eye, wrinkles, unwanted objects and people, and noise—and what to do about them

With Photoshop CS2, you can go beyond enhancing your images to create “art.” You have a very powerful painting engine, an extremely complex Brushes palette, and all kinds of painting tools. Photoshop CS2 For Dummies walks you though:

• Compositing (combining images into a piece of artwork) and working with layers, including choosing from the almost two dozen blending modes
• Selecting with Extract which is great for making tough selections, such as flyaway hair and various types of fringe
• Using Vanishing Point to “map” a pattern to angled surfaces
• Creating panoramas with Photomerge
• Creating precision edges with vector paths, including using shape layers and the Custom Shape tool, choosing from more than 300 ready–to–use shapes with the Custom Shape Picker, and using the Pen tool to create paths
• Where to find dozens, or even hundreds, of custom shapes already on your computer – absolutely free
• Dressing up images with layer styles, including using the Styles palette and creating custom layer styles
• Adding text messages and tweaking your text
• Using the extensive painting tools and the Brushes palette
• Using filters, including sharpening to focus the eye using blur filters or the Unsharp Mask and the new Smart Sharpen filter that give incredible control
• Getting fun effects with the Liquify filter

In a special Power Photoshop section, you’ll learn about streamlining your work, including creating a PDF for both onscreen presentation and for printing. You’ll discover how to spiff up your online images by working with Image Ready to slice, optimize, and otherwise juice up your images for the Web and how to create fancy rollover buttons and fun animations, 

From basic cropping to complex techniques that can turn good photos into great ones, Photoshop CS2 For Dummies is your guide to exploring all the possibilities that await you in Photoshop CS2.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18852 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From the Back Cover
Tame the Photoshop toolkit and get dazzling results

Grasp the basics, correct color and tonality, work with Raw files, and more

Wait till you see what you can do with Photoshop CS2! You′ll start with the nitty–gritty stuff, like how to get images out of your digital camera and into Photoshop, and go all the way to creating works of art with twisted type and the Photoshop Brush tool. Feeling even more adventurous? Check out Part IV for power–user tricks!

Discover how to:

• Download, scan, crop, and print photos
• Adjust brightness, correct color, and fix flaws
• Choose the right file format for your images
• Understand the Raw file format
• Turn photos into works of art

About the Author
Peter Bauer: Best known as the Help Desk Director for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), Pete is also the author of a half–dozen books on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, a contributing writer for Photoshop User and Mac Design magazines, featured columnist for PlanetPhotoshop.com, and software documentation writer for a variety of Photoshop– and Illustrator–related products. An Adobe Certified Expert, he also appears regularly as a member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team. As NAPP Help Desk Director, Pete personally answers tens of thousands of e–mail questions annually about Photoshop and computer graphics. He has contributed to and assisted on such projects as feature film special effects, major book and magazine publications, award–winning Web sites, and fine art exhibitions. He has taught computer graphics at the university level and serves as a computer graphics efficiency consultant for a select corporate clientele.

Customer Reviews

It does what is says on the cover.
Any book with a title stating the content is for "Dummies" is going to attract of the type of purchaser who feels they do not possess whatever technical expertise is required to master the subject. That is why I purchased this book.

Technology may be moving ahead at an incredibly fast pace, but it does not mean we ordinary mortals cannot keep up. I mention this because, when I purchased this book, I had already acquired Adobe Photoshop CS3 but this series of books had not yet produced an updated version for CS3. Nevertheless, I am glad I got this copy because it goes all the way back to basic training before bringing the reader forward - step by step, to an area of expertise.

The very concept of digital imaging is explained in a manner which gives those who are new to the subject a fundamental understanding which will then stand them in good stead for all time. The author then takes the reader through a series of progressively more difficult tasks always building on what has been learned so far. These include enhancing digital images, Creating "Art," Power Photoshop and much more besides.

Having, as I said, already purchased CS3 and attended three days of professionally run courses on the subject, I thought I might be coming to this book as a bit of a "know it all." Not so! There is much to learned from this product and it is always interesting to see another approach to the teaching of the subject. Learning from a book also allows you to go back over the same area again and again until you get it right. You can't do that in a classroom!

If you really are new to Photoshop and all the complexities that go with it, a copy of this book really should help you provided you are prepared to sit down and study the content - step by step, and put it all into practise.

NM

Unfortunately, falls between beginner and intermediate book
The Dummies books are normally very good, short and sweet intros to a program that can be read in a few hours before one goes on to deeper training in a bigger book. Unusually for the Dummies series, this one suffers from being ill-defined: it says it is a reference book, but there is, for example, no complete or even partial list of tools and no appendix for where to find specific adjustments or fixes. (The index can't fill in more detail than what is in the text.) It gives a good introduction to the Raw file format, but only cursory treatment to many, more basic features of Photoshop, such as cropping and resizing. If you don't know, for example, what the Curves dialog shows you about an image or exactly what the Color Sampler does, you won't find any explanation here. (By contrast, Bauer does much better in describing what histograms show.) As for so many features, these are mentioned, even described, in passing, but not explained.

im a dummy....so this little book is a blessing to own.
great book is you are a bit of a dum dum with photoshop.

well laid out and easy to understand as is all the "dummies" books.