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Title: Photoshop Elements 2: 50 Ways to Create Cool Pictures by David A Huss ISBN: 0-7357-1323-5 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 18 November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Outta be called "50 SIMPLE Ways to Create REALLY Cool Pix"
Comment: OK, my digital camera is my first "real" camera ever. I've never been one to tinker with photos but finally see the benefit in this wonderful information age we're living in. I'm as "green" as it gets when comes to Photograpy "tech" speak, yet I have no fear of manipulating photos anymore. Why?!? Dave's book!!! This book is truly intended for anyone that would like to their improve photos without having to overload on a bunch of uninteresting software manipulation that assumes you know EVERYTHING about digital photography. The software is pretty snazzy too, I must admit, and the book makes using it a breeze. I read enough in 1 hr to easily help me fix-up approximtely 1/3 of my photos (I am computer literate though), and I was REALLY pleased with the results. I have one thing to say: Friends & family BEWARE!!!
Rating: 4
Summary: Would have been outstanding, if only it had a companion CD
Comment: This is an excellent text for beginners sufficiently comfortable with PSE2 basics to follow simple instructions such as "select the Move tool". One doesn't get the sense that Huss tried to fill the title's quota of "fifty" by compiling largely useless fillers; to the contrary, the techniques are logically grouped to meet common challenges such as cropping, color correction, resizing, retouching, sharpening, etc. Text-wise, this book richly deserves five stars for its lucid presentation, smooth flow, and to-the-point color illustrations.
BUT, as I've learned the hard way, you've got to practice step-by-step the 'visual cookbook' (author's term) instructions with work-along images; if not, the slide lecture becomes a mere blur of words. Most regrettably, an inexpensive CD with original uncompressed digital images is NOT included -- a deficiency shared with other self-help books produced by this publisher (New Riders) such as Scott Kelby's more advanced "The Photoshop Elements Book". Although the publisher's website provides a downloadable archive of some of this book's illustrations, the images are low-resolution, highly compressed, and lamentably incomplete [two critical work-alongs in chapter 5 alone were missing]. To place the download burden on a beginning reader seems thoughtless and ill-conceived, and devalues the author's substantial contribution to learning to create cool pictures.
This would have been my 5-star recommendation for mature beginners because of instructive text with right-on color illustrations on each page. But, with the need to download a set of second-rate images that is incomplete to boot, with blanket statements such as "combine the best of both pictures in one image", and omission of dimples and wrinkles in the chapter on 'Retouching' - the net instructional merit drops down to 3.5 stars.
This 5-star author deserves better support than a less-than-stellar production: proper copy editing surely would have caught the repeated use of 'affect' for 'effect' (and lesser spelling sins); savvy project management would have caught the few sweeping statements lacking description (and figures), and ensured that the text describing 'Meg' being cropped, brushed, leveled and cloned would have been fleshed out by a companion practice image in the downloadable library. As it stands that 7+ page exercise (nicely illustrated, to be sure) leaves me, pardon the pun, with a dodgy spongy blur of words; much like learning to do an appendectomy from a textbook.
Production criticisms notwithstanding, this IS a very well laid out manual, written in a pleasantly conversational non-technical style that hits each point home in easy-to-follow steps and relevant illustrations; all it needs to rise to the top is a bit of nurturing by a user-friendly publishing team.
Rating: 2
Summary: 50 ways of going nowhere with PE2
Comment: I really regret buying this book. It is supposed to be an easy tuorial well suitet to beginners like myself. Most of the examples are easy to understand, but I found the explanations of using the different tools somewhat variable. My main objection however is that only a fraction of the pictures used in the step by step tutorials are available ( and only as a download from the publishers website). Not being able to play around with the examples and follow the the author all the time made the learning process much harder. Why the author/ publisher has not bothered to make all the material used in the examples available I do not understand.
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Title: How To Do Everything with Photoshop(R) Elements 2 by David N. Plotkin ISBN: 0072226382 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 22 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
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Title: The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2 by Richard Lynch ISBN: 0782141781 Publisher: Sybex Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography by Mikkel Aaland ISBN: 0782141404 Publisher: Sybex Pub. Date: 22 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby ISBN: 0735713928 Publisher: New Riders Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.99 |
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Title: Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 Idea Kit by Lisa Matthews ISBN: 032113009X Publisher: Adobe Press Pub. Date: 05 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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