Transform ordinary images into breathtaking works of digital art with the advanced power and endless possibilities of Photoshop 5, Adobe's state-of-the-art digital imaging software. Take the grand tour of Version 5 with veteran tour guide Deke McClelland, and then move into new and exciting realms of digital wizardry as you master an array of text effects, image enhancements, and other wondrous things that make Photoshop 5 so hugely popular among the digiterati. Photoshop guru McClelland takes you gently -- and intelligently -- through the world of pixels, paintbrushes, and special effects with friendly, easygoing, down-to-earth tips and tricks to help you master the fine art of digital imagery. Clean up bad scans and poor-quality pictures, learn special painting tricks, create collages, add gradient fills and strange warps, explore new filters, and make your artistic masterpieces publishing-perfect or Web-ready with Photoshop 5. Plus, 16 pages of full-color examples -- and dozens of black-and-white images -- add to the visual content of this great guide for professional image-makers and amateur artists alike.
This Dummies guide is designed for beginners who want to learn the core features in Photoshop 5 for Windows in a short amount of time. You start off with an overview of the two aspects of the package--painting images and editing images--and learn what's new in this version. The author explains how to navigate the interface using zooming, guides, and grids. In the second part of the book, he discusses image size, resolution, pixels, color, file formats, and file-saving and -printing issues. The third part of the book focuses on painting, photo retouching, and undoing your work--using the eraser and History palette, for example. In the fourth part, you really start messing with pixels by learning the basic selection tools, such as lasso and rectangle selections, and the more advanced ones, such as adding to and subtracting from a selection, extending a magic wand selection, and transforming selections and paths. You also apply color and gradients to selections. Finally, in the fifth part, you work with layers, type, filters, and advanced color-correction tools, such as contrast and brightness.
You can follow along with the projects as closely as you like, or just get general how-to tips for your own work. The book offers simple, clear discussion and quick technical tips, shortcuts, and warnings of common pitfalls, all denoted by easy-to-spot icons. Icons also note a feature that's new to this version. (The book assumes that you don't necessarily know any version of the package but alerts you to any changes in case you do.) Two full-color sections show examples of the project files, some in various stages of editing. The book has the same humorous, light approach to learning that other Dummies books have, and this makes it all the more accessible, especially if you're intimidated by what you've got to learn. The last section of the book, "The Part of Tens," features 10 techniques to memorize, 10 funny ways to distort faces, and 10 ways to output your work. These tidbits provide a good basis for becoming comfortable with the essential Photoshop tasks. A Macintosh version of the book is also available. --Kathleen Caster
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
i learned a lot from this book:
As a person who uses photoshop for doing graphic/fine art, I learned a lot from this book it helped master what can be a very clunky program and use it to develop my fine art skills on computer also has 5.5 ( i am using 6 now ) get this book and you too will be able to use this unqiue program.
An Uneven Book:
As a newcomer to Adobe PhotoShop, I had high hopes for this book. It is of some limited usefulness but ufortunately it is a very uneven book.
As others have written, the overuse of grade-school level humor detracts somewhat from it. Far worse is the author's practice of glossing over some very basic concepts, such as how to resize an image without noticeable loss of resolution, how to begin work on a new photographic layer and how to "flatten" an image seamlessly. In these and other instances,... more info
excellent book:
i went through it with my term project images and got an A Simple to understand and basically just excellent. If your the kind who like to read through the entire manual first to get a rough idea of what photoshop is about, this is perfect. The humour was nice to have, but get slightly out of hand at times. But hey! it is a good book!
Too much keyboard shortcut information:
I didn't know anything about Photoshop before I bought this book. It is helping me to learn the basics, but I find the humor to be distracting. I'm also frustrated by the amount of information on shortcut keys early in the book. I'm sure I'll be grateful for the information some day, but not while I'm learning the product. It's too much.
![Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513ZJ7MYFJL._SL75_.jpg)
