Photoshop CS6 All-in-One For Dummies
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Photoshop CS6 All-in-One For Dummies Details
From the Back Cover Explore all the creative ways you can use Photoshop to enhance your images Want to get the red out of a subject's eyes? How about restoring an old photo? Or adding text and shapes to an image? With this guide, you quickly find out how to do it all and get the most out of Photoshop. Each minibook shows you how to use the cool features that Photoshop has to offer so you can create stunning images and graphics. Get your feet wet — dive into the basics of Photoshop and become familiar with the desktop, menus, panels, and key tools Create a work of art — use the drawing and painting tools to make your images pop with gradients, patterns, text, and more Blend it all — create and edit layers; then enhance them by applying different blend modes, opacity settings, and styles Put a mask on — become a pro working with channels and masks and then take advantage of filters and distortions Looking better than ever — gain the skills to fix flaws and imperfections to improve your images Open the book and find: Steps for cropping an image and adjusting the size How to make selections with the Marquee and Lasso tools Tips on compositing with multiple layers Ways to enhance images using blending modes Filtering techniques to smooth defects and sharpen soft areas Hints for repairing images with healing and toning tools How to prep your graphics for printing Techniques for creating and editing type 8 Books in 1 Photoshop Fundamentals Image Essentials Selections Painting, Drawing, and Typing Working with Layers Channels and Masks Filters and Distortions Retouching, Restoring, and Printing Read more About the Author Barbara Obermeier is principal of Obermeier Design, a graphic design studio in California specializing in print and web design. She is currently a faculty member in the School of Design at Brooks Institute. Read more
Reviews
I have a lot of respect for this author to have created so many comprehensive "Dummies" manuals. And, in all fairness, she does mention in the very first chapter that the book is not for basic beginners, so the "for Dummies" portion of the title is very misleading. Of course, it would be a challenge to write a manual for beginners, considering that the Photoshop program is not user-friendly, as there are often 5 or more ways to do the same thing. (As a reader, I found it confusing to be shown multiple ways to do the same thing....it boggles the mind!)I bought this book while taking a Photoshop certification course, and even now that I have completed the course and use Photoshop regularly, I have yet to be able to find a complete answer to my questions in the text. I am a former instructional designer (and educator) with a lot of experience designing training manuals, so my perspective is that of someone who understands how people learn. Unfortunately, this book has many of the pitfalls of other technical manuals written by people who think like a "techie," rather than an educator. To me, it would have been more logical to start the book with "The 10 most common things people do with Photoshop." (There is actually a YouTube video that does this.) I would have liked to know, for example, how to cut an image out of one picture and paste it into another...from step 1 (opening the 2 photos) to the final step of saving and closing it. Unfortunately, this book does not do that.Instead, it offers fragments of skills, organized in a way I found difficult to follow. Also, the author often says, "For more details, refer to chapter X in section X," but there are no page number references, so you have to go looking. By the time you find the other section, there may be a further reference to another section for more details, and you lose your train of thought (and have to remember what the previous section was trying to say). Truthfully, this book was not even a 3-star book for me, but I gave it 3 stars because I am guessing that more skilled people might find it useful. Also, it is over 700 pages of technical details, so it must make sense to someone. (Maybe?) I cannot attest to that, though, because I am merely a beginner, with one Photoshop course under my belt. Still, I've ended up finding much clearer answers on the Internet, rather than in the book.In summary, this book reminds me of those mathematics and physics professors who are so intelligent, so detail-oriented, and so knowledgeable in their field that they don't really understand the thought processes of the basic beginner. Alas...and my apologies to the author.
