The Photoshop Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
The Photoshop Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) Details
This book breaks new ground by doing something for digital photographers that’s never been done before—it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it.” It’s not a bunch of theory; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure things out on your own. Instead, it does something that virtually no other Elements book has ever done—it tells you flat-out which settings to use, when to use them, and why. If you’re looking for one of those “tell-me-everything-about-the-Unsharp-Mask-filter” books, this isn’t it. You can grab any other Elements book on the shelf, because they all do that. Instead, this book gives you the inside tips and tricks of the trade for organizing, correcting, editing, sharpening, retouching, and printing your photos like a pro. You’ll be absolutely amazed at how easy and effective these techniques are—once you know the secrets. LEARN HOW THE PROS DO IT Each year we train thousands of digital photographers and, almost without exception, they have the same questions and face the same problems—that’s exactly what we cover in this book. You’ll learn: The real secrets of how the pros retouch portraits How to color correct any photo without breaking a sweat (you’ll be amazed at how the pros do it!) How to use Camera Raw for processing not only RAW photos, but JPEGs and TIFFs, too! (And you’ll learn why so many pros like it best—because it’s faster and easier) The sharpening techniques the pros really use (there’s an entire chapter just on this!) How to deal with common digital camera image problems, including removing noise and avoiding halos The most requested photographic special effects, and much more! THE BOOK’S SECRET WEAPONAlthough Elements 10 offers some digital photography features that Photoshop CS5 doesn’t offer, there are plenty of features that Photoshop CS5 has that Elements 10 still doesn’t have (things like paths, Channel Mixer, etc.). But in this book, you’ll learn some slick workarounds, cheats, and some fairly ingenious ways to replicate many of those Photoshop features from right within Elements. Plus, since this book is designed for photographers, it doesn’t waste your time talking about how to frame a shot, set your exposure, etc., and there’s no talk about which camera or printer to buy. It’s all Elements, step by step, cover to cover, in the only book of its kind, and you’re gonna love it!
Reviews
I've used Elements since the first version, and have purchased "how-to" books for versions 2, 4, 8, and now, 10. My previous favorite was the Maximum Performance book by Mark Galer for ver 8, which really explained things like Camera Raw and introduced me to Layer Masks. This book takes these areas to new levels of understanding for me, and adds much more. I had been interested in the concept of High Dynamic Range for a few years, and tried several methods to add the HDR effect to my photos. I took 3 shots with my camera, and tried layering them together. I tried HDR software to automate the process. I got interesting results, never quite as good as the examples I was trying to match. Then I read the Camera Raw chapter in this book, and found out a cool way to create the HDR effect just by creating layer masks with two different versions of the same photo. The result was the best HDR photo I'd ever processed, and it didn't involve taking 3 or 5 shots with varying EV settings. With tips like this, my photos are looking better than ever, and taking way less time. I love the tone of the book, the chapters are written in a casual style and you can almost imagine Kelby or Kloskowski sitting there, showing you how to do it. The format is also very easy on the eyes: unlike some books that use text that spans each page with photos either above or below the text, this book uses a column style, with text on one side of the page and the corresponding photo right next to it. This is much easier to follow, and the step-by-step explanations of each effect flow quite easily. Finally, I found that there were many things I was doing "the hard way" because in the course of explaining a particular procedure, the authors point out how to easily get to a certain point, and I would say "wow, that's a lot easier than the way I was doing it..."Not only have I found dozens of better ways to do things, but if you take a lot of photos and spend hours enhancing them with Elements like I do, this book will save you a lot of time.