5 Responses to “Photoshop CS4: Essential Skills”

1. Daniel S. Boucher says:

   January 27, 2010 at 7:35 am

   A solid reference for stepping into the world of Photoshop. While I don’t have CS4 (I have CS3) it was still easy to follow along and perform the majority of the examples. Great instructions with detailed images of your task.

   The internet has so much to offer, a single google search on a particular photoshop question will return you thousands of results and for the most part for free. Given this, a book needs to really stand out and this one does as a great reference and works well for those looking for “at your pace” tutorials.
   Rating: 3 / 5

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2. Stephanie Sullivan says:

   January 27, 2010 at 10:27 am

   I had a older version of this book from some years ago. This is pretty much the same book up updated for CS4, and nicely done. It’s a great reference of techniques and how-to’s for common tasks and work-flow.

   The adobe books such as this provide a very nice tactile experience. It is very enjoyable to hold, the printing excellent, and the texture of the heavy paper used for the pages a delight. As Photoshop CS4 is about the experience so is this book.

   The book comes with a DVD promising tutorials and lots of really great content and example files from from projects in the book. I was greatly disappointed the DVD would not read in my player and had a easily visible defect on the surface. Perhaps this is a rare thing, but I’d recommend trying the DVD before reading the book so you can return it if there is a problem. Obviously I can’t offer an opinion on the DVD content, but if it’s nice as the book, I’m really sad it’s not available to me.
   
   Rating: 3 / 5

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3. Peter B. Stewart says:

   January 27, 2010 at 1:26 pm

   If you have even modest experience with Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements, then this book will probably be a disappointment. Good breadth of coverage, poor depth of coverage. (Note: I have not tried the tutorial DVD; I am speaking only about the book itself.)
   
   Rating: 2 / 5

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4. But I'm feeling much better now... says:

   January 27, 2010 at 3:23 pm

   This book is a treasure trove of information, but digging it out is a chore. There is way too much information on some subjects for instance, did you know that people have historically used Macintoshes but many people now choose Windows-based PC’s? Also, of course you need to know that due to the large file sizes involved with digital images you should have a high capacity, removable storage device such as a CD or DVD writer attached to your computer. I’m not sure if the information is dated, just being added to from version to version of Photoshop, or is just plain filler. I would think that someone that just plunked down more money for Photoshop than a lot of people spend on a computer would have a working knowledge of these and many, many other tidbits of knowledge. I just caught another one, “If you have a plentiful supply of RAM ( 1 GB RAM or greater) you have to give permission for Photoshop to tap into these RAM reserves…….)

   The book almost immediately (by page 17) throws out some terms such as `alpha channel’, `smart object’, `old skool’ (sic) features, but then, almost immediately afterward in the middle of nowhere starts a new section `New and Revised for CS4.’ Then we go through a brief discussion of Bridge, then incredibly how to take a picture with such advice as to use a remote shutter release and a tripod.

   Unexplainably, we go from such simple advice to incredibly complex operations. While the new Merge to HDR command is easy to use, and the Merge to HDR section is 9 pages long, the actual CS4 command is only briefly mentioned on the first page, and is followed by an incredibly detailed method of manual merging photos using masks, layers, etc. The part lacking here is that the reader is led along through each step with a `press this button’, `move slider to 50′, `.08 pixels’ and more of the same. Very few reasons or explanations are given as to why you’re doing what, so you don’t really learn anything. It very much reminds me of the current popular style of one author, with a one page per project theme of what you really need to know and a `move this to this’ instruction set. It makes something easy to do if you are going to duplicate the same steps with every picture you take, otherwise no real foundation of learning has been established for doing things and learning more on your own. Using this method, and given enough time and patience, you could teach a Chimpanzee to hit the right buttons in the right order to edit and print a photograph! (But only that 1 photograph).

   The enclosed DVD is used as a major point in selling this book. In fact, the royalty free images (which they make a REALLY big issue of) would not be worth stealing anyway, and the movies are very amateurish and so blurry you really can’t see what is being done, and that is such a distraction that the material presented becomes useless.

   I think the whole book can be summed up by a quote from the book: “we have been busy advocating alternative non-destructive ways of adjusting your images rather than encouraging readers to employ these tools, but it seems that there are still users who prefer their `simplicity’.”.

   I hope that the authors and publisher decide to put out a book for the next version of PS (CS5?), but next time they really look at what they have, and what PS has, and get organized and update the material to match the software. And shoot new films.

   This is a pretty good book, but there are a lot of PS books out there, and many are better.
   Rating: 3 / 5

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5. anonymous says:

   January 27, 2010 at 5:25 pm

   This book is called Photoshop CS4 essential skills. Wrong. It should be called essential skills for users of RAW only. All the videos/tutorials we watched on the DVD were for users of RAW only so we took it out. Wasted $40 and we will not buy this guy’s books online again. Wish we had bought a different CS4 book.
   Rating: 1 / 5

   [Reply]

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