Customer Reviews
It does what is says on the cover. - By: Ned Middleton, 01 Oct 2008 
Any book with a title stating the content is for "Dummies" is going to attract of the type of purchaser who feels they do not possess whatever technical expertise is required to master the subject. That is why I purchased this book.
Technology may be moving ahead at an incredibly fast pace, but it does not mean we ordinary mortals cannot keep up. I mention this because, when I purchased this book, I had already acquired Adobe Photoshop CS3 but this series of books had not yet produced an updated version for CS3. Nevertheless, I am glad I got this copy because it goes alll the way back to basic training before bringing the reader forward - step by step, to an area of expertise.
The very concept of digital imaging is explained in a manner which gives those who are new to the subject a fundamental understanding which will then stand them in good stead for alll time. The author then takes the reader through a series of progressively more difficult tasks always building on what has been learned so far. These include enhancing digital images, Creating "Art," Power Photoshop & much more besides.
Having, as I said, already purchased CS3 & attended three days of professionallly run courses on the subject, I thought I might be coming to this book as a bit of a "know it alll." Not so! There is much to learned from this product & it is always interesting to see another approach to the teaching of the subject. Learning from a book also alllows you to go back over the same area again & again until you get it right. You can't do that in a classroom!
If you reallly are new to Photoshop & alll the complexities that go with it, a copy of this book reallly should help you provided you are prepared to sit down & study the content - step by step, & put it alll into practise.
NM
Unfortunately, falls between beginner and intermediate book - By: , 15 Sep 2005 
The Dummies books are normallly very good, short & sweet intros to a program that can be read in a few hours before one goes on to deeper training in a bigger book. Unusuallly for the Dummies series, this one suffers from being ill-defined: it says it is a reference book, but there is, for example, no complete or even partial list of tools & no appendix for where to find specific adjustments or fixes. (The index can't fill in more detail than what is in the text.) It gives a good introduction to the Raw file format, but only cursory treatment to many, more basic features of Photoshop, such as cropping & resizing. If you don't know, for example, what the Curves dialog shows you about an image or exactly what the Color Sampler does, you won't find any explanation here. (By contrast, Bauer does much better in describing what histograms show.) As for so many features, these are mentioned, even described, in passing, but not explained.
