Book Recommendations

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Adobe Photoshop 5.0 for Photographers by Martin Evening

The book takes you by the hand and guide you through processes that seemed complicated, making life so much easier. The greatest advantage is that is teaching the principles of how it works, not a step by step tutorial, so anything can be applied to any image. Is the technique, not the image, what is shown in that book.

If you want a professional book, don't hesitate, this is the one.

info@chris-george.co.uk from London UK , 14 January, 1999
Using PSD as a digital darkroom ? This book is excellent
This book is an excellent introduction for photographers who intend to use Photoshop 5 as a digital darkroom. Many books in the marketplace are aimed at graphic and web designers, this book is far more specific using good examples and an excellent CD Rom to explain various techniques to improve, enhance and transform your photographs. The only critisicm that I have is I would have liked to have seen more advanced techniques. Perhaps Photoshop 5 for Photographers - Advanced Level ? I would have no hesitation in recommending this book.

donf@intercall.net from New Jersey, USA , 2 October, 1998
Good book for photographers on Photoshop 5.0
This is the first book I've seen that is about Photoshop specifically from the photographer's point of view. I found this a great attraction in buying the book.

The book has a lot of information which I have found in no other place. The sections on color management in Photoshop are especially important and relevant. The sections on photographic image manipulation are well done and useful.

I would recommend the book to photographers who are serious about digital imaging, manipulation, and printing.

However, I do have some complaints about the book which annoyed me, and also may "put some others off". It is for these reasons that I think that this is not a "5-star" book.

1. The job of editing the book is poor. Not a small amount of the English used is oral-jargon, and as such, is much more difficult to read than it would have been to hear. It makes the reading quite confusing in places. The editors should have picked these usages up and corrected them.

2. Though the reporductions of dialog boxes, etc., are of good quality, many of them are reproduced in such a size as to make reading the contents very difficult. The effective type size in some of these boxes is less than about 6 pt. These illustrations needed to be much larger.

3. A lot of the magic process of digital imaging is done -- needs to be done, and should be done -- at the scanner level. Doing the same sorts of corrections in Photoshop is much less effective. The author (understandably; this is a book on Photoshop) gives scanning short shrift. In my opinion, he should not have done so.

4. Similarly, the issue of printing from Photoshop to ink-jet, sublimation, etc., printers is also given short shrift. The bias of the book is printing through bureaux. This is understandable, but the current stampede direction of users is in the direction of inexpensive, high-quality desktop printers, making this a serious omission.