Updates
Latest Tweet
What's New?
Check out for latest innovation, a computer based training video collection
Like this Page
Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop CS2 in 24 Hours Review by Blackjack Davy
Perfect beginners book! Choose this and not the "dummies" book.
Photoshop is a complex program. Theres no doubt about it, if you're a total PS newb it can be very daunting prospect indeed. There are literally hundreds of books about Photoshop but most are aimed at the experianced, or at the very least someone who has some knowledge already of at some graphics software or other.
So then landed in my lap this book. After struggling with "Photoshop for Dummies" and others of it's ilk this book was a godsend. Whats the point of talking about text masking techniques and CMYK versus RGB when all you really want to know is what is this brush and what does it do exactly? And this book is aimed squarely at this hapless audience, i.e. me. It has a series of logical steps that lead you steadily and carefully by the arm through all PS's set of labyrinthine and amazing (and you will be amazed) menus, tools, and functions. And it does it all very well apart from the occasional hiccup when something doesn't quite make sense, which leads me on the final chapters, or hours, of the lessons in this book, which is where it starts to come apart unfortunately.
The problem comes when it finally comes to the knotty task of original composition, and here it's as clear as mud. For instance in hour 18 it asks you to create a background using the gradient tool.. but it hasn't taught you about how to use that yet, that doesn't come until later in hour 20. Oops. Whats worse is the rest of the task is simply too advanced for the reader at this level of tuition to be able to grasp. Later in hour 20 it asks again for a original composition and reason goes completely awol, totally out the window here too. For instance: "Make a selection of the upper third of the sky... add clouds... and then do the same with the lower half". Right, so is that half the remaining two thirds of the sky or half the rest of the picture or what?!? Then: "I just create a brush that looks like a boat and add them to the picture..." uh, how do I do that then? Nowhere does it explain in the book how to do this. Theres some poor editing in the in the final chapters and it's a shame because it really lets the side down and it drops my review from a 5 to a 4 star.
However if you can ignore the hapless attempts at tuition at original art and when it sticks to what it's good at, namely teaching you the basics of what the various tools are and how they work, and fortunately thats 95% of this book, then it's very good indeed. This is simply the only Photoshop book thats aimed at newbies that I've come across that actually does what it says on the label. Highly recommended.