Photoshop CS2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

By Barbara Obermeier

Brace yourself--this For Dummies guide is in full, dazzling color That way you can see how you can lighten, brighten, blur, sharpen, or even age your digital images with Photoshop CS2. Chances are you have Photoshop CS2 and have explored it enough to know that you need a good guide to make the most of all its capabilities and get up to speed fast. Odds are you've experimented with some photos and spent hours tweaking them. Maybe you're a veteran and used Photoshop CS2 to turn the gray sky to blue in a resort photo or to brighten the CEO's smile. Maybe you're a novice and gleefully extracted your ex from old photos and gave yourself a flattering mini-makeover at the same time. Maybe you used it to remove a scratch from a treasured family photo. Regardless, you probably haven't scratched the surface. Photoshop CS2 gives you so many options and tools for digital image creation, correction, and enhancement that even experienced pros can discover new techniques and shortcuts. With explanations for working on a PC or a Mac, Photoshop CS2 All-In-One desk Reference For Dummies is your complete resource that: Combines nine minibooks: (1) Photoshop Fundamentals (2) Image Essentials (3) Selections (4) Painting, Drawing, and Typing (5) Working with Layers (6) Channels and Masks (7) Filters and Distortions (8) Retouching and Restoration (9) Photoshop and Print Has more than 650 pages of tips, techniques, and plain-English explanations Is in glorious, full color, with all kinds of photographs and examples Has tons of screen shots so you'll know exactly what to look for on your screen Provides a tear out Cheat Sheet that's your instant reference for finding your way around Photoshop CS2, accessing the tools palette through shortcuts, and making selections Gets you up to speed on the new Adobe Bridge that lets you view, search, and organize your files, edit Camera Raw files, search for and purchase royalty-free stock photography, synchronize color settings, and more Introduces you to the 58 tools in the Tools palette, from the Pen to the Eraser... the Spot Healing Brush to the Burn...the Clone Stamp to the Red Eye Explains how to work with Vanishing Point--the new feature that lets you edit three dimensionally on a two-dimension image Features special Putting-It-Together exercises that walk you through numbered steps to show you how to do various tasks such as getting the red out of eyes, making and fine-tuning a collage, and more; images on the book's companion Web site let you follow along

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764589164
• ISBN13: 9780764589164
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: For Dummies
• Length: 682 Pages
• Weight: 3.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Good reference book

For me this book finds the right balance. It's not too dry and not 'cute'. It's the book I had been looking for.

A Very Complete Reference Book

Except for the yellow cover, this just doesn't look like a For Dummies book. As soon as you open it you start to see color printing everywhere. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of four color images, and they are scattered throughout the book. (Even the usual 'For Dummies' cartoons are in color.) This isn't at all like a lot of books that only have a few color plates. It also appears to be a higher quality paper that looks brighter than the other books in the series. This makes sense because Photoshop is a highly color oriented software package. The really nice thing about all this is that they didn't raise the cost significantly. A lot of books printed like this one are twice the price. Of course the real test of a book is not its appearance, but its content. This book is aimed at the beginner to intermediate level user. It kind of combines a tutorial and a reference approach. The first few chapters are really introductory. It doesn't make much sense to jump around in them. But after that the chapters are pretty much stand alone. You can use the index or the general chapter heading to find the particular area that interests you and get the information you need. This is a welcome addition to photoshop literature. While it's aimed at the beginner, even an expert will find a few points that will help him on his next project. The author runs a graphic design studio in Ventura, CA. She has written several other books on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator and teaches at local colleges. Note that this book only covers Photoshop as part of the CS2 package. You may also want to consider 'Adobe Creative Suite 2 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies' to cover the other parts of the suite.

understandable to a new user

Photoshop is now a huge and powerful graphics editing program. Trying to learn it can be formidable. So naturally, along comes a Dummies text to alleviate the pain. As with all the books in this series, no prior knowledge of the topic is required of you. But perhaps it is telling that the book is over 600 pages long. Even in an introductory text, this shows that you can learn a lot about its "special effects" [if I may use that phrase]. The writing style is deliberately casual, and the use of jargon is minimised. Of course, the reference nature of the book is the main reason for its length. But Obermeier shows that much of Photoshop is understandable even to a new user.