Product Description

Scott Kelby was honored with Professional Photographer magazine’s highly coveted 2008 Hot One Award for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. Here’s what Jeff Kent, the Hot One Editor at Professional Photographer, has to say about the book: “In a how-to published by Peachpit Press, Scott Kelby, best-selling author on Adobe Photoshop, delves into CS3 to uncover the most important and useful techniques for digital photographers. Our judges liked Kelby’s direct approach with step-by-step instructions. In this new edition, Kelby shares even more secrets from the top pros.”

Shutterbug magazine chose The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers as a Top Digital Book of 2007.  Here’s what Joe Farace of Shutterbug has to say about the book: “Scott Kelby’s name on a Photoshop book is like the Dodge brand on the front of a pickup truck. You know it’s built RAM—or pixel—tough. Combining his famous twisted wit with unwaveringly straight tutorials, Kelby takes you through a detailed tour of Photoshop CS3 by showing how to use the new features. No fluff; just page after page of well-illustrated tutorials showing photographers how to get the most out of the new features, commands, and effects found in the latest version of Adobe’s flagship. It will get you up to speed on CS3’s new features faster than you can all by yourself.”

Scott Kelby, the #1 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 CS3 techniques for digital photographers. This major update to his award-winning, record-breaking book does something for digital photographers that’s never been done before–it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it.” It’s not a bunch of theory; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure it out on your own. Instead, Scott shows you step-by-step the exact techniques used by today’s cutting-edge digital photographers, and best of all, he shows you flat-out exactly which settings to use, when to use them, and why.

That’s why the previous editions of this book are widely used as the official course study guide in photography courses at college and universities around the world, and this new edition for Photoshop CS3 exposes even more of the top pros’ most closely-guarded secrets.

Learn How The Pros Do It
Each year Scott trains thousands of professional photographers on how to use Photoshop, and almost without exception they have the same questions, the same problems, and the same challenges–and that’s exactly what he covers in this book. You’ll learn:

• The sharpening techniques the pros really use.
• The pros’ tricks for fixing the most common digital photo problems fast!
• How to get great looking prints (that actually match your screen!)
• A whole chapter on the latest, most requested Photoshop special effects!
• How to color correct any photo without breaking a sweat.
• How to process Raw images, plus how to take advantage of all the new Camera Raw features in CS3!
• The portrait retouching secrets only the pros know about!
• How to add real automation to your work.
• How to show your work like a pro!

Plus a host of shortcuts, workarounds, and slick “insider” tricks to send your productivity through the roof! If you’re a digital photographer, and you’re ready to learn the “tricks of the trade”–the same ones that today’s leading pros use to correct, edit, sharpen, retouch, and present their work–then you’re holding the book that will do just that.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10469 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-27
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
"This is not some reprint of an old book, but new text with tons of great, new ideas on how to polish your images. Our capture devises while good don’t capture everything we see. Our images also go to many places, not just the computer monitor. Scott’s book is full of techniques for cleaning up color, sharpening, presentation either by print, web gallery or a host of other ideas, organization, black and white conversion and the list just goes on and on. And all of these techniques take advantage of all the power and ease of Photoshop CS3.This is one monster of a book!"  -- Moose Peterson, moosepeterson.com

“In my opinion, The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book is one of those books that contains so much information that it really is a must have. If you are a beginner to Photoshop, you will have everything you need to create better photos. You will be able to learn things in a step-by-step approach that will fine tune your learning. If you are experienced, The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book will fill in many of the holes that you may have because of the depth and breath of Photoshop itself.” -- T. Michael Testi, Blogcritics

From the Back Cover
Scott Kelby was honored with Professional Photographer magazine’s highly coveted 2008 Hot One Award for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. Here’s what Jeff Kent, the Hot One Editor at Professional Photographer, has to say about the book: “In a how-to published by Peachpit Press, Scott Kelby, best-selling author on Adobe Photoshop, delves into CS3 to uncover the most important and useful techniques for digital photographers. Our judges liked Kelby’s direct approach with step-by-step instructions. In this new edition, Kelby shares even more secrets from the top pros.”

Shutterbug magazine chose The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers as a Top Digital Book of 2007.  Here’s what Joe Farace of Shutterbug has to say about the book: “Scott Kelby’s name on a Photoshop book is like the Dodge brand on the front of a pickup truck. You know it’s built RAM—or pixel—tough. Combining his famous twisted wit with unwaveringly straight tutorials, Kelby takes you through a detailed tour of Photoshop CS3 by showing how to use the new features. No fluff; just page after page of well-illustrated tutorials showing photographers how to get the most out of the new features, commands, and effects found in the latest version of Adobe’s flagship. It will get you up to speed on CS3’s new features faster than you can all by yourself.”

Scott Kelby, the #1 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 CS3 techniques for digital photographers. This major update to his award-winning, record-breaking book does something for digital photographers that’s never been done before–it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it.” It’s not a bunch of theory; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure it out on your own. Instead, Scott shows you step-by-step the exact techniques used by today’s cutting-edge digital photographers, and best of all, he shows you flat-out exactly which settings to use, when to use them, and why.

That’s why the previous editions of this book are widely used as the official course study guide in photography courses at college and universities around the world, and this new edition for Photoshop CS3 exposes even more of the top pros’ most closely-guarded secrets.

Learn How The Pros Do It
Each year Scott trains thousands of professional photographers on how to use Photoshop, and almost without exception they have the same questions, the same problems, and the same challenges–and that’s exactly what he covers in this book. You’ll learn:

• The sharpening techniques the pros really use.
• The pros’ tricks for fixing the most common digital photo problems fast!
• How to get great looking prints (that actually match your screen!)
• A whole chapter on the latest, most requested Photoshop special effects!
• How to color correct any photo without breaking a sweat.
• How to process Raw images, plus how to take advantage of all the new Camera Raw features in CS3!
• The portrait retouching secrets only the pros know about!
• How to add real automation to your work.
• How to show your work like a pro!

Plus a host of shortcuts, workarounds, and slick “insider” tricks to send your productivity through the roof! If you’re a digital photographer, and you’re ready to learn the “tricks of the trade”–the same ones that today’s leading pros use to correct, edit, sharpen, retouch, and present their work–then you’re holding the book that will do just that.

About the Author
Scott Kelby is President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), the trade organization for Adobe Photoshop users, with thousands of members in the US and 63 countries. Scott is Editor-in-Chief of both Photoshop User magazine and Layers magazine, and is the technical chair of Photoshop World, the largest Photoshop gathering in the industry. Scott is one of the leading Photoshop trainers in the country today; he trains thousands of Photoshop users across the country each year, and is featured in a series of Photoshop training videos. He can also be seen on the popular weekly video podcast, NAPP TV.

Customer Reviews

Quite simply, a MUST HAVE book for photographers of all levels!!!
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!

Give a man a fish...
This book is very good overall, but your level of satisfaction will depend on what you want to get from a book on Photoshop and whether or not you can cope with the `humour'.

Lets get the `humour' out of the way first:

Yes, it is tiresome, unfunny, over done and above all arrogant. BUT, that does not make this a one-star book in my opinion, for the simple fact that the `humour' is relatively easy to avoid. Follow these simple steps:

- Don't read the `Acknowledgements' section - you risk being sick all over your brand new book
- Don't read the `Unexpected Q&A' section - it contains only one useful piece of information, which I'll share: the photos used throughout the book can be downloaded from the companion website www.scottkelbybooks.com/cs3book
- Don't read the prefaces to each chapter - they contain no useful information at all

Follow the above steps, and you'll have avoided MOST of the `humour'. You'll just have to learn to cope with the `witty asides' which crop up every now and again throughout the main body of the text - but they're easy to gloss over.

More importantly, the content of the book:

The book adopts a step by step approach to each technique, which allows you to attain great results very quickly, using some quite advanced processes. The book assumes no prior knowledge of Photoshop, so you can jump in at any point, follow the step-by-step instructions and get results; if you need to use a tool, the book will show you where it is pictorially and also give you the keyboard shortcut - you don't need to understand any of the fundamental principles of what each tool is for - just follow the instructions.

The book is logically laid out in terms of workflow, starting with Adobe Bridge (which it spends too much time on), moving onto processing RAW images, resizing and cropping, colour management and printing, then onto corrections, retouching and special effects. It all makes sense, but as I said, if you want to jump straight in to the `Hollywood Highlights' chapter on portraits in the middle of the book, then you can.

What this book does not do is give you much, if any, information on the fundamental principles behind what you're doing; in short, it doesn't tell you `why'. It simply says "You want to skin soften this portrait? - okay, open this, press this, press that, move that, press that, slide that, do that, press that, save." This is fine, and the book doesn't pretend to be anything else, but it's a very specific thing, and for me even though it's enjoyable, I'm left wanting more.

This book is great for getting results, and it certainly provides a sense of satisfaction (where other more technical books fail). As I said at the beginning, it really depends what you want, but for most people, I'd suggest that this is not the Only Photoshop Book You'll Ever Need.

This is excellent, but it's still very much giving you a fish. If you want to really learn to fish, you're going to need something else as well, which is worth bearing in mind as these books are expensive.

Good tutorials - feeble humour
Overall, the content of this book is excellent, though Kelby's facetious writing style and "jokes" are depressingly juvenile - a bit like an upmarket version of a "Dummies" book.

But it is very well organised and well presented, with step-by-step tutorials that are painstakingly thorough - almost to a fault, so that it will take two pages to describe a process that might be covered by a more concise book in, say, half a page. Because of this, it is not a completely comprehensive reference on all aspects of Photoshop CS3 (like, for example, Martin Evening's handbook) - more of a very nice teach-yourself manual with the emphasis on practical techniques and tips.

I found the sections on Camera Raw and Bridge particularly useful, especially since it is up-to-date with the latest upgrades, and certainly at Amazon's current price (half the RRP in high street bookshops) it is a genuine bargain.