Updates
Latest Tweet
What's New?
Check out for latest innovation, a computer based training video collection
Like this Page
Photoshop CS2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies Review by Robert Derenthal
One Book Short
This Photoshop book claims to be 9 books in 1. That may be, but they should have added a tenth to this compilation. There is absolutely nothing in the book about one of Photoshop's most powerful programs: Camera Raw.
I consider this to be a major flaw for this book. There is even a 300 page book on the market that deals just with Camera Raw (Real World Camera Raw with Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser). If you are just using an inexpensive camera that only uses jpeg or perhaps tiff files then you can't use the Raw program. I would assume, however, that if you are shelling out $500+ for Photoshop you are probably using a decent camera that utilizes Raw files. The Raw program is an amazing program within Photoshop that lets you make numerous adjustments and corrections to your pictures before they are opened into the basic Photoshop program. It's a fascinating program, and you are missing an awful lot if you are not incorporating it into your photograph work flow.
So for many enthusiasts this definitely cannot be the only book you buy, unless, of course, you find the Adobe manual a sufficient resource for you.
As other reviewers have indicated the tutorials in the book are generally well written, and the author usually tells you the purpose of each step in a process.
I find one other weakness in the book, and that is a lack of an accompanying CD of pictures used in the text. There are about 5 pictures that can be downloaded from the website, but this is a minimal amount. It has always been most useful to me to learn by working on the exact pictures used in the text instructions. This would seem especially useful to those who are new to photoshop. There are several excellent books on the market that include a CD or have downloadable pics - for example, Katrin Eisman's book Photoshop Restoration and Retouching, 3rd edition, has over 100 megabytes of downloadable pics that are used in the text