Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills (Photography Essential Skills)

Sensors, Cameras, and Applications for Digital Photography (Proceedings of SPIE) -

Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills (Photography Essential Skills) Customer Review: Photoshop CS3 Help
Photoshop CS3 is such a gobsmacking programme, particularly if you are new to it (like me), that any help is useful. However, this book is much more than that. Clear pictures, projects, signposted sections and an excellent accompanying CD with the base images, projects and demonstration videos is a of real value. It is well written, in relatively plain and accessible language, with only the odd slip into jargon (that you can find). It develops from beginning to end, and you can skip backwards and forwards through it with ease. Handy reference for later work as you progress. Better value than many books I’ve had of similar type in the past - this is presently my handrail and guide to learning.
Customer Review: A different view
Sorry, but I can’t agree with the other reviewers. I think this book is pathetic: do not be enticed by the fact that it contains lots of pretty colour photos. It has a reasonable run through the very basic background material you need to use a photo editing program (resolution, image types etc). But thereafter it just seems to wander aimlessley through different areas of functionality. If you knew Photoshop before you read the book then it might help (why are you reading the book then?), but otherwise you’ll be confused by the use of new concepts before they are explained, and the seemingly random walk through different ‘things to do’ to photos. It is neither task oriented nor logical in my opinion: and when faced with a photo that I need to work on the book leaves me no better informed as to where to even start.

A fair bit of criticism has to go to the amateur nature of the publisher as well. It doesn’t help when headings all share the same style, so you can’t tell sub-headings from sub-subheadings… and the use of pictures BEFORE the supporting text is utterly confusing. Some degree of consistency in showing before AND after images, just before, just after, small before image, small after image etc. are what the publisher should be sorting out. Also, just throwing the supporting images on a DVD with no direct link from those in the text is just plain lazy. Very amateur.