Product Description

Photoshop is one of those programs that's so cool you just want to dive right in and start creating–but by plunging in head-first, without any guidance, you're likely to miss a lot. There's a solution: With this book, you learn by doing, getting your feet wet immediately as you progress through a series of hands-on projects that build on your growing Photoshop knowledge. Simple step-by-step instructions, review questions at the end of each chapter, and a companion CD with all of the book's project files make learning a breeze as the Adobe Creative Team takes you on a self-paced tour of the image-editing powerhouse. This bestselling guide has been completely revised to cover all of Photoshop CS2's new features, which include advanced tools for digital photographers, such as a new Spot Healing Brush for correcting scratches or blemishes, and Smart Sharpen for fixing photo blurring. Photoshop CS2 also includes loads of new creative tools, such as Vanishing Point and Image Warp. This comprehensive guide starts with an introductory tour of the software and then progresses on through lessons on everything from Photoshop's interface to more complex topics like color management, Web graphics, and photo retouching.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37146 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From the Back Cover
Photoshop is one of those programs that's so cool you just want to dive right in and start creating–but by plunging in head-first, without any guidance, you're likely to miss a lot. There's a solution: With this book, you learn by doing, getting your feet wet immediately as you progress through a series of hands-on projects that build on your growing Photoshop knowledge. Simple step-by-step instructions, review questions at the end of each chapter, and a companion CD with all of the book's project files make learning a breeze as the Adobe Creative Team takes you on a self-paced tour of the image-editing powerhouse. This bestselling guide has been completely revised to cover all of Photoshop CS2's new features, which include advanced tools for digital photographers, such as a new Spot Healing Brush for correcting scratches or blemishes, and Smart Sharpen for fixing photo blurring. Photoshop CS2 also includes loads of new creative tools, such as Vanishing Point and Image Warp. This comprehensive guide starts with an introductory tour of the software and then progresses on through lessons on everything from Photoshop's interface to more complex topics like color management, Web graphics, and photo retouching.

About the Author

The Adobe Creative Team is made up of designers, writers, and editors who have extensive, real-world knowledge of and expertise in using Adobe products. They work closely with the Adobe product development teams and Adobe's Instructional Communications team to come up with creative, challenging, and visually appealing projects to help both new and more experienced users get up to speed quickly on Adobe software products.

Customer Reviews

A must-have book for your desk
If you are using Adobe Photoshop, and not an expert user (or even if you think you are), then buy this excellent book.
A complete beginner would be advised to read this book from cover to cover (although this tends to bore me to tears) and the more experienced user could always learn something new from this book. I've been using Photoshop for many years now, but it seems that I can open the book at a random page and learn something new everytime.
If you already own a previous version of this title, then you will find little new in this version apart from the updates that have been made to the previous versions of the software itself.
I find that a good companion to this book on the shelf is 'Photoshop CS for Dummies'. The two titles complement each other on the various technical details of Photoshop.

Great for all levels of ability
I am a reasonably confident user of photoshop but felt that I needed to update my skills now I have upgraded to CS2. I found this book to be very helpful, giving me lots to try, the chapters were structured so that you could dip in and out of the book, so if you needed to learn about a particular function you could. The excercises were useful, giving me the opportunity to actually work on a live file rather than just read instructions from a book.
The excercises at the start of the book are fairly basic, allowing even new users to Photoshop to pick up necessary skills for creating their masterpieces. This book would also be useful for anyone who enjoys digital photography and wants to learn how to "tweek" their images, remove red eye and take out imperfections.
I shall be investing in the Illustrator and InDesign books now too!

I thought I knew a lot
I thought I'd give this a go, cause it was 50% off. I've been using photoshop for work and pleasure since '98, and am proud to be self-taught. I've pretty much got the hang of doing anything I want to do, and like all photoshop users I know, have my own particular way of doing things. After only completing the first couple of lessons, I have learned masses of stuff. Nothing ground-breaking, nothing new, just better ways of doing what I already knew.

I once had a maths teacher who explained things in three different ways. The first time half the people got it, the second time 98% of the class understood, and the third time meant that everybody could go away having learned something. This book is like that - it teaches you how to do things in different ways - of course this may seem long-winded, but in the end it makes for much more effecient work.

I've ordered a couple of others from the series now, because I can see that just by reading through them I will work much better. Oh, and the pictures are so good, that I can read and understand it without being anywhere near the computer (although that's cause I'm familiar with the workspace - if you were new to photoshop you'd have to sit at the computer).

The information is heavy and serious, but it is broken up into managable bits, and instead of going away feeling like I've slaved away, I put the book down feeling that I have achieved something. It's also part of the official training for becoming an Adobe Certified Expert - which can't be a bad thing...