The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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 wi
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(out of 156 reviews)
List Price: $ 54.99
Price: $ 27.95
August 24th, 2010 on 4:04 am
Review by Joseph Boone for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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This is neither the biggest book on Photoshop, nor the most comprehensive. The author makes no pretense of covering every feature contained in the massive program known as Photoshop CS3. What he does attempt to do is identify tasks useful to digital photographers (and this includes film shooters who scan) and give step-by-step explanations to get them done. Most of the information is presented in a very task-oriented approach. The emphasis is squarely placed on giving you the tools to get things done quickly and efficiently. As such, I find it a highly useful reference book often as I edit photos.
For those who own the prior version for CS2, this is much more than a rehash of the same material with a few odds and ends added to cover the new CS3 features. I was surprised to see that most or all of the example photos appear to be new for this edition and the author has reorganized the material within each chapter. I applaud Mr. Kelby for what looks like an earnest attempt to earn our money rather than just cash in on the sales a new version of Photoshop automatically generate.
On the negative side, I do wish that the author would tone down his attempts to be funny throughout the book. Humor has gone from being unknown in how-to books to being painfully overused and this book is a prime example. It goes from being mildly cute for the first couple of pages to just getting in the way and slowing down the flow of information as you continue reading.
Overall, I highly recommend this book. Mr. Kelby has done an excellent job organizing and presenting a useful guide to Photoshop CS3 and I commend him for that. If he prunes 90% of his attempts at humor, I’ll give his next book 5 stars instead of 4.
August 24th, 2010 on 5:01 am
Review by Glyn Dewis for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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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!
August 24th, 2010 on 5:10 am
Review by Michael W. Schellenberger for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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This book reminds me of the old proverb, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ This book just throws some fish at you.
With that being said and the popularity of the book I guess a lot of people like being thrown fish. I wanted to learn to ‘fish’ but the book taught me little about ‘fishing’.
I can say I did learn some stuff from the book and I was certainly glad I’d used Elements for a couple of years prior. The book is certainly not for newbies as it covers nothing about the many tools/options you have available in the toolbar other than in some contexts of creating a visual effect. I didn’t see much in the book for a seasoned Photoshop user as only basic ‘retouching’ ideas are ‘thrown’ you.
I was particularly appalled when told to just use Adobe RGB as the color profile with no explanation other than sRGB is for the web. While I am no expert I do know there is a lot of talk/arguing in the industry about which you should/might use and the heart ache that Adobe RGB might cause you. There should have been some discussion on this topic, I don’t need advice like this.
So, in my opinion, if you have played with Photoshop a little and are ‘a learn by example’ type of person then this book might be for you. If you want to learn about why you might grown/feather a selection, understand the various tool settings/options or learn anything remotely advanced I would look for another.
August 24th, 2010 on 5:55 am
Review by JM for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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While many have criticized Kelby’s stylistic prose, the content in the book is very helpful and allows hobbiest to hard core professionals to produce beautiful images. I feel that this series will allow users to maximize their output in the least amount of time.
Compared to the CS2 version, there have been some improvements and additions (smart filters and portrait skin softening) with great images. There are some redundant chapters, but still worth it for beginners as well as a refresher for advanced users. I’ve read through most of the book, and while a few chapters are useful, my workflow has not significantly changed.
Those with the CS2 version, I’m less convinced that this is a must have upgrade. For those on the fence who don’t have the CS2 version, go get it as it’ll be the best $30 you’ll spend.
August 24th, 2010 on 6:28 am
Review by Photoguy for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
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Don’t get me wrong, this is a good book, as far as it goes, but I thought it could be more comprehensive. If you want to know everything about PhotoShop, this isn’t the book for you. This is a step by step “how to” book. As such, those techniques which are covered are explained very well. The problem I have with this book is that it only covers a moderate sampling of PhotoShop CS3′s capabilities, but only a sampling. If Mr. Kelby covered PhotoShop’s editing power as extensively as he covers the associated file management Bridge, and Camera Raw, this would be an outstanding work.
If you are a real “pixel picky” techno-junkie, and want to know everything about PhotoShop, The Photohop CS3 Bible is a better choice.
Photoshop CS3 Bible