Photoshop CS and Elements self study books

WC
Posted By
W Chan
Oct 30, 2005
Views
759
Replies
2
Status
Closed
Hi,
I am looking for suggestions on some good self study books on CS and Elements. There are quite a few in the bookstores and many seem to cover very basic features.

Thanks,

w.

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Dave Du Plessis
Oct 30, 2005
On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 05:32:39 GMT, "W Chan" wrote:

Hi,
I am looking for suggestions on some good self study books on CS and Elements. There are quite a few in the bookstores and many seem to cover very basic features.

Thanks,

w.

Your question is as if you ask what kind of car to buy
while standing between all the driver manuals, and
only you know where you want to drive to and at
what speed.

All the popular books are described on Internet.

If you are a graphic fan, you’ll buy something else than the photographer.

Use whatever search machine on your PC
and read the reviews. Type in Photoshop CS Books
or Adobe Photohop CS Books or something to
this effect and tell us what you decided on.

That is the way I decide
what camera to buy and the way I decide
which books to buy.

I bought
Adobe CS2 Classroom in a book
and
Adobe Photoshop for Photographers
Martin Evening.

Maybe you should go for the first.
There is a CS & CS2 version.

Dave

ps.
If you buy both,
you need nothing else than
your library and tje News Group:-)
The News Group is just as Important!
JK
JP Kabala
Oct 30, 2005
Books, like anything else, are a matter of taste and need to fit your own needs.

There are three (OK, three and a half) basic types:

"Bibles"- that try to be all things to all men and end up covering many, many, topics– but nothing very deeply. They’re good to get an overview or a start to greater understanding, but not if you want in depth information on a specialized topic. Deke McClelland writes the Photoshop Bible and it’s a pretty good book. So is Classroom in a Book from Adobe. My least favorite in this category is the "How to do everything" series, because it is patently absurd. An image editor as complex and multifaceted as PSCS and/or PSE can’t be taught in 300 pages.

"Cookbooks" that present a limited number of specialized techniques, and the recipes for recreating them. Scott Kelby’s books are a lot like that. So are things like "50 Fast Photoshop Effects"–The downside of those books is that
a) you rarely need to re-create the author’s effects exactly and b) they
never tell you why you are doing what you are doing, so you aren’t learning the WHY just the HOW. These books can be useful if you’re both intuitive and analytical about the way you learn software, (I have several in my library) but you’re going to have to do your own work to make the connection between the author’s 10 easy steps and your next project. And (this is just my personal experience) there’s rarely anything in there that you can’t find online for free once you master Google. An exception to the rule is The Art of Photoshop by Dan Giordan, because, while he takes you through a number of set projects, he also gives you insight into his thought processes and the actual software techniques. It’s also an incredibly pretty book.

"Seminars in a Book"– Written by folks who know how to teach as well as use software, these are books that tell you how your software is designed to work, and provide examples of representative techniques. This is a decidedly different focus than either of the other 2 above, and they are much rarer. Ben Willmore’s Photoshop Studio Techniques is my favorite in this category, and the book I recommend most often to new users.

"Focused Guides" are a subset of the Seminars group above. For an advanced user, these are some of the best books on the planet. But you’ll have to buy a bunch of them. They focus on a very limited topic, but they treat it in real depth. I have great books just on photo restoration, on integrating Photoshop with Illustrator, on Actions, on photorealism, on color management, on typography, on using a tablet with Painter and Photoshop, etc. If you’re a photographer, Katrin Eismann, Martin Evening and Dan Margulis’ books also fall into this category. If you’re an Illustrator, Bert Monroy’s books are also here.

In the end, it’s all a matter of what you want and need to learn. HTH

"W Chan" wrote in message
Hi,
I am looking for suggestions on some good self study books on CS and Elements. There are quite a few in the bookstores and many seem to cover very basic features.

Thanks,

w.

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