Real World Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Real World)

List Price: $54.99 Discount Price: $21.96

Customer Reviews:

PSCS2 for expert (and patient) photographer [Posted on 2006-11-13]
I'm an Engineer and Physicist, so I'm always eager to go to the root cause of the things I'm doing. Bruce and David definitely know what's behind Photoshop and they'll explain it with deep details, too deep. This is the only reason why I can give the book only 4*. There are plenty of examples, but they take long and convoluted way to explaining things. If you are a beginner, look for something else, but if you're an intermediate, this may be the book for you. It is very comprehensive and can give you very professional instruments to improve your Photoshop workflow. They even show you many different ways to tackle the same problem in the most effective way. The drawback is the tiring length. Probably the same concepts could have been summarized in less than 2/3 of the pages.
Moral of the story: If you can focus your attention through the 1000 pages of the book, you'll end up with a large luggage of bits of information, tip and tricks you even ever dreamed of.

This is the bible... [Posted on 2007-01-04]
This really is the top pick for a book on Photoshop CS2. Keep in mind though that it is much more of a manual than a tutorial. It is probably a bit of a steep learning curve for an absolute beginner. It has far more depth than almost any other book on the subject. It also lives up to its title "Real World" in that the authors give very useful pragmatic advice as to what is actually useful and how best to apply the tools to situations you are likely to encounter. It IS NOT a step-by-step tutorial. If I had to have only one book on Photoshop it would be this one. If you are truely starting from scratch I'd recommend that you supplement this book with a few online tutorials just to get you up and playing with the software a little before diving into the details.

It is worth noting there are plethora of really poor photoshop books out there. Besides this book, which is probably the pick of the litter, you might also consider:

Scott Kelby's book: This one is extremely basic, holds your hand the whole way, has huge dialog box captures and really does nothing to educate you as to what is really going on. It is a very shallow book. I only list it here because if you are actually terrified of photoshop this might be a friendly introduction. That said, I don't understand why such a book exists. It makes perfect sense for Photoshop Elements, but if you are actually bothering to use CS2 it implies you want more tools and control that Kelby's book introduces you to.

Martin Evening's book: Also a good in depth book. Not quite as deep as Real World, but also a bit more tutorial oriented. A very good supplement and probably a number of people's first choice.

Photoshop LAB Color, Dan Margulis: Once you know your way around Photoshop you'll want some help actually deciding what exactly to do to your images. The LAB colorspace offers some of the fastest ways to improve images but is a bit counter-intuitive at first. If you tend to photograph natural scenes it is the one colorspace to work in. Get this book, you won't be dissappointed.

In short, if you don't need to be led by the hand and want a very in depth resource that covers nearly everything but focuses most on what is useful then you want "Real World Photoshop CS2".

Superlative [Posted on 2007-01-29]
Adobe should purchase the rights to this book and send it out as the manual. It is staggeringly good. Scott Kelby's books are silly tricks. These guys provide the theory behind what the program is doing, and then explain in clear, understandable and friendly prose how to master the essential tools in the program.

Reading technical material has never been so enjoyable.

This is an incredible book.

This book is only ok [Posted on 2007-02-13]
This book covers a lot of ground, and doesn't just cover surface topics either, its really an in depth look into the amazing world of Photoshop.
I'm not going to cover the contents of each chapter, you can find another review that does just that, all that I would like to do is give another point of view that I wish someone else had given when I was looking to buy this book.

I have about 13 Photoshop cs2 books, and this is probably the one that has disappointed me the most. Its not a very practical book, although it covers a lot of ground, I found the explanations to be a tad incoherent and a bit too long winded, they go into so much detail and become so technical that you end up loosing site of what you are trying to achieve. For instance I worked through the chapter on color settings-(setting up Photoshop so that what you see on the monitor and what actually prints looks the same) and I found that after working through almost 100 pages, I was no closer to understanding color management than when I started, and ended up having to go onto the internet to try and figure out how it works.

I want to point out, its not that the subject matter is too advanced, its just in my opinion not very clearly presented compared to many other books out there. If you compare their take on removing an image from its background with Katrin Eismann's book "Masking & compositing" you will see immediately what I'm talking about. Their teaching style is very cumbersome, and top heavy compared to Katrin's sleek, streamlined articulate approach, and this goes for every chapter in the book.

If you are trying to learn how to use some of the more advanced controls in Photoshop, I would recommend that you look somewhere else, where as if you have been using Photoshop's advanced functions for 15 years and want to find out how to tweak those controls so that you can get the most out of them then this book may certainly help you there.

a must read!!! [Posted on 2007-05-08]
i use photoshop everyday. at work and at home. of course i know everything... i thought! of course... NOT!!!!
a must read for everyone using photoshop more than 15 minutes a day... :-)

have fun!

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