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50 Fast Digital Photo Techniques
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Author: Gregory Georges
List Price: $24.99
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0764535781
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (01 July, 2001)
Edition: Paperback
Sales Rank: 11,970
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 5 out of 5
This is the best way
This is the best book to use to learn the essentials of how to use Photoshop Elements for beginners. You can't go wrong if your are getting started with digital photography and printing if you spend a few nights going through these excercises.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Outdated, with unpardonable omissions in tutorials.
After raving about this author's "50 Digital Camera Techniques" (see 5-star review), I bought what I hoped would be a great companion tutorial for processing digital images. What a disappointment! First, this book came out in 2001 (probably written in 2000) when Photoshop Elements (PSE) first saw light, and Windows XP still was a promise on the horizon. Of course we now have PSE version 2 (as well as XP); the "free trial software" on the CD, likewise, is badly outdated [PhotoImpact now is in ver 8, rather than ver 6 offered]. Not good, but not fatal thus far, because PSE commands haven't changed all that drastically in the new version [the former 'square marquee', for instance, now is named 'rectangular marquee']. But, really unpardonable, are the assumptions, errors and omissions in the tutorials themselves. In the first technique alone I found two inexcusable faults: (a) author blithely talks about 'options' that pop up in the 'options bar' when you select a tool - well, he just forgot to tell me to first turn on the 'options bar' in the Windows menu, so I had to go through the Help menus to learn that fact. (b) in adding a border to the bottom of the image, you are directed to the 'canvas size' dialog, where a complicated 3x3 grid just begs for explanation of 'anchor point', rather than for "getting the hang of it" all by myself. And, not so incidentally, if one wants to add a lower 0.25 bottom border to a 10" tall image, the proper new height is 10.25 -- not 10.75 as printed. Clearly, this book was written hastily and without thorough proof reading. Equally clearly, I stopped after chapter 1 to find a more compassionate tutor - PSE's Help topics and built-in tutorial will do quite nicely to get you started. The center-bound color plates, moreover, were a nice bonus in the digital camera book, but a minus in a photo-editing tutorial where color plates should appear right with the applicable text. Not the least, the black and white vignettes reproduce poorly on the pulpy (?recycled) paper. I may be overly harsh on this author, but he's shown that he CAN write a superb tutorial - let's hope the forthcoming second edition corrects the shortcomings of the first edition. Overall: a less than successful recipe collection, that rises to a decent cookbook on occasion. There must be better, and more current, tutorials around - I haven't found one yet.
Rating: 4 out of 5
50 Fast Digital Photo Techniques by Gregory George
I have found the book very helpful in learning how to use Adobe Photoshop 5.0. Since I have the older program I needed references to learn the many basic techniques. This book is keyed to Adobe Photoshop Elements but has cross-referenced translation tables for various Adobe Photoshop versions (5.0-7.0) and other programs. I have completed 50% of the lessons so far and find the accompanied CD lessons aligned perfectly with the text. Easy to complete but require some familiarity with the older PS version commands. The text is clearly written and the author has done a great job in presenting the subject. I have two years of digital camera use and wanted to go beyond shoot and print photography. A great aid to me.
The text I purchased at Books a Million has 292 pages not 352 as listed in Amazon's product details and published by Hungry Minds.
Similar Products
· 50 Fast Digital Camera Techniques
· The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers
· Complete Digital Photography (2nd Edition)
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