Photoshop Tricks

5 Comments for this entry

• BostonAaron
  September 24th, 2010 on 4:22 pm

  Review by BostonAaron for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC
  Rating:
  This is arguably better than the missing manual to Photoshop CS5. The author has a clear writing style and the illustrations are first rate so that you can actually see the modifications he is discussing. This book also includes a DVD with movies showing some of the new features of CS5 including content aware fill and puppet warp. There is a significant discussion of using raw to preprocess pictures even if they were not captured in RAW format. He even covers color management in considerable detail, well beyond the usual display profiling and calibration.

  Of course every book can be improved and even though I gave this book the maximum number of stars I believe that there are short comings that some other authors can and will address. For example, the index seemed a little hard for me to use, at least at first, and I wished that the entire book, rather than selected chapters was on the DVD so I could search for what I wanted. Nevertheless the DVD does include a help guide that complements the book and provides some desktop assistance. Also, even though the book contains numerous specific examples of photographic modifications and repairs and the DVD contains the original photographs when possible for your practice, I think that there are other Photoshop books that provide more fully illustrated examples with the steps more clearly outlined. I also have the Scott Kelby Photoshop CS4 book for digital photographers as well as the CS3 book and these guides teach by example, with the books organized as a series of photographic fixes. As I am writing this review, however, the CS5 book is not yet available and I’ve been temporarily saved from having to read through Mr Kelby’s humor to get to the good parts.

  So to sum up. Martin Evening has created a tour deforce explaining the features you need to run Photoshop CS5 that is better illustrated than the Adobe Photoshop CS5 user’s guide available on the Adobe web site! (see it’s not really missing and you can Google photoshop CS5 user guide to find it like I did) He has also included a DVD and movies illustrating his skills, a nice touch. And he has left room for other authors to provide illustrative examples in guides organized differently.
• Megan M
  September 24th, 2010 on 5:22 pm

  Review by Megan M for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC
  Rating:
  I recently upgraded from PSE7 to CS5 and was a bit overwhelmed with all the new tools and options now available to me. Martin Evening’s CS5 book is fabulous! It does assume some prior PS knowledge, so I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone completely new to PS, but it is very informative and full of practical tips for someone relatively familiar with Photoshop. I had a question about one of the techniques in the Image Retouching chapter and emailed the author. I received a prompt reply in less than 24 hours from Mr. Evening clarifying his description in the book and pointing me to some other resources. I have many pages earmarked already and will continue to use this as a reference whenever using CS5. Highly recommended!
• Tenna Merchent
  September 24th, 2010 on 5:27 pm

  Review by Tenna Merchent for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC
  Rating:
  This book is a great deal. The book itself is quite thorough, and the DVD has so much material in it that it alone is worth the cost of the book. The DVD has tutorials, tool detailed descriptions, and my favorite, which is a 33 page PDF of all the Photoshop keyboard short cuts. I printed this out and keep it at my desk.

  The book was originally written for intermediate to advanced users, and although he says it is now written to include beginners, I’d say it’s still a book for people who know their way around Photoshop.

  I have his previous book for CS4, and I thought it was quite good, so I was really excited to see this one come out so soon. At first glance, I wasn’t impressed, because it uses his old material, but as I took my time and studied the book, I found it was quite updated for CS5. He does a great job of explaining the aspects of CS5, and I love the fact that he goes into such great detail for Camera Raw, which he obviously uses quite extensively.

  I consider this an excellent reference book, while I’ve read it and watched all the tutorials on the DVD, this is a book I keep by my computer, and refer to it when I need detail on a particular aspect of Photoshop. This is my favorite Photoshop book, and I have many.

  So why didn’t I give it 5 stars? Many of the photos he uses as examples are not well shot or good quality, and that always influences my impression of a book about photography or Photoshop. He’s also a curves snob saying you can do just about anything with curves, but without going into detail as to how he would do so. This is a problem throughout the book as he doesn’t always explain himself, for instance he mentions about how you can deactivate and activate a computer to use Photoshop so that you don’t exceed the license limit of two computers, but he doesn’t tell you how. (You find it in the help menu, and Adobe really only lets you license 2 computers)

  Those weaknesses aside, this is a great investment.
• FredM
  September 24th, 2010 on 6:22 pm

  Review by FredM for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC
  Rating:
  Martin Evening set the standard for Photoshop books aimed at photographers several releases ago, and continues to produce the most comprehensive guides for those who spend a lot of time behind the camera. It may seem odd that photographers need a special version that relates to their needs, but too many Photoshop books are written by graphic artists who also take pictures, or by amateur photographers who develop skills in Photoshop and fancy themselves “real” photographers. Martin Evening is one of the rare breed that has both amazing photographic skills and is adept at applying Photoshop to optimizing his images. Unlike books that simply show you how to repair ill-captured images in Photoshop, this one will help you take great shots and make them even better.
• Bill Eger
  September 24th, 2010 on 7:10 pm

  Review by Bill Eger for Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: a professional image editor’s guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC
  Rating:
  Martin Evening may be the last best hope of comprehending the infinite complexity of Adobe products. There are those of us who are giving up on use of all the things Photoshop can do. Adobe doesn’t seem able to manage them very well, either, so an early and unusual update on CS5 was sent out to cool the nerves of many jangled users.

  Because of his very close relationship to Adobe Mr. Evening has an overview few of us can match. An accomplished photographer, his book is based on an eye long sharpened to photographic effect rather than “just another pretty shot.” The material on shooting raw images is urgently required reading for every serious photographer.

  And, because he has been at it for so long, Mr. Evening can ferret out new complexities that have crept into the coding on more than just new additions to Photoshop’s burgeoning bag of tricks. This 746-page book and a superb DVD with video and text-with-illustration have answered every question I’ve raised since CS3 when I first discovered Mr. Evening’s
  
  abilities. Every new issue by Adobe has been met with the careful language and detailed explanations that have brought him is well-deserved fame.

  On-line training is always very helpful but it is frequently necessary to have printed material to open and read for full understanding of the inner workings that make Adobe great to use but extremely difficult to ‘grok.’ This is the way to do it, with Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers.