Photoshop Tricks

5 Comments for this entry

• Miguel Carvajal
  June 27th, 2010 on 10:49 pm

  Review by Miguel Carvajal for Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom
  Rating:
  Ever since I got stung by the Photoshop bug several years ago, I’ve kept up with Adobe’s new releases for this particular software and I always like to get a good instructional book to show me its new features. Usually the books published by Peachpit Press are the ones I find very informative and well-written. This time Peachpit Press was late in getting out the book by Scott Kelby, which I’ve always like, so I decided to try my luck with this book. I was in for a very pleasant surprise for the simple reason that this book includes a DVD with videos for every lesson, and those videos are well-made, informative, and have good production quality. The videos make it a lot easier to understand what it is expected from the lessons in the book, and they alone are worth the price of the book. I’m still giving it a 5-stars rating even though the last three lessons are dedicated to features which are not included in my version of the software, they’re part of the Extended version only.
  
  I definitely recommend this book to those who, like me, are newbies and advanced amateur users of Adobe Photoshop CS4.
• G. Heald
  June 27th, 2010 on 11:35 pm

  Review by G. Heald for Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom
  Rating:
  Like many designers, I already have a shelf filled with Photoshop books, so when I picked up this book I honestly didn’t expect any surprises. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Jennifer Smith and the AGI Creative Team have put together an extremely useful, comprehensive look at a program I thought I already knew quite well. The lessons are appropriately paced for both novice and expert users, and the DVD tutorials are nothing short of enlightening. I highly recommend this book to all Photoshoppers everywhere.
• Jerron I. Smith
  June 28th, 2010 on 12:24 am

  Review by Jerron I. Smith for Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom
  Rating:
  I am a designer and design educator from the NYC area. I have worked with Photoshop for quite a while (well over a decade) and have had many Photoshop books in my personal library over the years. The books that Jennifer Smith and her team produce on the subject have consistently been among the best in my collection.
  
  I really found the sections on Camera Raw and Image Correction to be among the best on the subject.
• Pat Vandenbosche
  June 28th, 2010 on 12:28 am

  Review by Pat Vandenbosche for Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom
  Rating:
  I’ve spent a small fortune on CS4 books in the past 4-6 months, and can honestly say this is the first one that was understandable, especially coupled with the videos that explain each chapter. There may be some details that would cause this book to not qualify for the full five star rating, but I’m too new or dumb to know the difference at this point. What I do know is that I’ve understood how to use masks for the first time… and it is soooo easy! Wish I had found this book first.
• Travis J. Gill
  June 28th, 2010 on 12:56 am

  Review by Travis J. Gill for Photoshop CS4 Digital Classroom
  Rating:
  I upgrading to Photoshop CS4 from Photoshop 7 so I was in need of some training on seven years of development. I had a pretty good foundation of Photoshop while earning my Graphic Design degree in college so I was looking for something that wasn’t geared to the absolute beginner.

  This Digital Classroom series book fit the bill exactly. Each lesson builds off the previous in some regards, but important ideas are continually reviewed throughout the text. The important keyboard shortcuts are taught and used extensively. The chapters on layers and masks were the most useful, allowing me to have much more control over image adjustments.

  The accompanied disk, with short video instruction, was well done and offered instruction for both Apple and Windows based machines. I felt the lesson length was very manageable for someone on a tight schedule. You could easily get through the book in a long weekend but I found it better to take the lessons in short one hour increments. The layout of the lessons makes this very easy to do.

  Overall, a phenomenal lesson manual for using CS4! I would easily recommend this series to anyone looking for instruction on Adobe software.