Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: The Photographer's Guide to Photoshop
Iain Laskey says this is a great book for photographer's needing to learn what Photoshop can do for them
| Product | The Photographer's Guide to Photoshop |
|---|---|
| Company | David & Charles |
| Web | www.davidandcharles.co.uk |
| Price | £12.99 |
| We like | Clear explanations done in a way that are aimed at photographers not graphic designers, price |
| We don't like | Now dating badly |
| Rating | 8/10 |
| Requirements |
The Photographer's Guide to Photoshop is a well known title that has often been recommended elsewhere so we were pleased to receive a copy to look at recently.
Our first thought was that perhaps we'd been sent an older copy as the version of Photoshop used throughout was clearly far from being the latest and the copyright date indicated it was at least a couple of years old. We then discovered that the author had sadly died which explained things somewhat but Photoshop and digital photography related books are in a very competitive market so could this lack of timeliness hinder the book?
A few chapters in it became clear that this wasn't going to be the case and the book's real strength started to show - the author had a flair for explaining Photoshop and digital manipulation in terms and concepts that were aimed at photographers, not graphics design experts.
Best of all for us was the total lack of pretensions. When the author needed to explain opacity, rather than waste time on crafted images, he just squiggled a bunch of fat wavy lines with different settings over a photograph. Brilliant!
The various features of Photoshop that are important are all covered but not in massive detail. What you do get is enough to give you an understanding of the function and what it can do for you, some screen shots and comments on most (but not all) of the options and how useful they are.
The various colour models are explained but the author is careful to note that unless you're intending outputting to certain pro options such as commercial printing presses, RGB is what you want and to only use CMYK when specifically needed. He also has screen shots that show the often subtle differences. We've seen some books which have lost something somewhere along the production process and you can't see any difference in the CMYK/RGB comparisons but here you can still tell the difference.
Coverage
A quick scan down the table of contents indicates sections on getting the photos in your PC, including scanners for those still using film or wanting to work with archival material, brushes, masking, colour and tonal tools, layers, channels, filters and the more useful keyboard shortcuts which are essential for efficient use of Photoshop. At just over 140 pages, it's not a huge book by any means but still manages to get all the important stuff covered.
One area that is often a cause of serious teeth gnashing is getting mask selections right. Trying to create a suitable mask area without having unwanted extras or missing something important, especially on more complex images is a black art probably worthy of a book in its own right. Here the author presents the tools available and the 'rules' for modifying selection points in succinct paragraphs with useful illustrations. That said, later versions of Photoshop offer some excellent enhancements in this area but this is nonetheless a particularly useful section.
Conclusion
We liked The Photographer's Guide to Photoshop. Sure it is starting to get a bit long in the tooth but given that its strength is putting over the concepts rather than covering Photoshop in detail, we'd say this wasn't in the end a problem. Anyone who wants to start exploring Photoshop (or indeed Photoshop Elements) will find this a great book to begin their journey. We'd suggest following it up with another book more dedicated to covering the detailed functionality of the software such as one of the 'Missing Manual' books. That way you can read this one to understand the idea and the basics of Photoshop then use the other to fill in the fine detail.
The layout is bright with very white paper and good quality printing which helps enormously when conveying subtle effects. The illustrations both photographic and non photographic are all well chosen and in the case of the photos are not so perfect as to alienate the reader which was plus point for us.
On the strength of this book it's clear that the author's untimely demise was a great loss to the photographic community. He had a special knack for cutting through the chaff and getting the important concepts over clearly and concisely. For the time being at least, we can safely say this is the best 'first book' a photographer can choose when they want to explore what sort of things they can achieve with Photoshop and its ilk.
