Deke McClelland accomplishes the very difficult task of teaching the core functionality and features of Photoshop. With every new version, Photoshop brings new abilities to the digital graphics and photo professional; and with those abilities come added complexity. For someone getting started today, the idea of learning this unparalleled program is daunting.
PS CS3 One-On-One itself is someone daunting if you simply pick up the book and flip the pages. The book is long at just over 500 pages, primarily because each task taught is presented in painstaking detail, step-by-step. With plenty of visuals, the book does an outstanding job of walking through advanced techniques with enough detail and description so as to not lose the reader.
There is absolutely no way a Photoshop user can learn a feature or technique simply by digesting a few pages of a book and calling it good. With that in mind, PS CS3 One-On-One is presented in a quality lesson format with all the necessary elements for students to succeed. Visual learners will be jazzed to view the well designed pages with plenty of screen shots and cropped examples. Visual and auditory types both will find the included DVD of complimentary training videos from the famed Lynda.com site invaluable.
At times the detail included with each lesson does drag on a bit, but in reality that is representative of what it takes to accomplish desired effects in Photoshop; not everything is a quick filter and done. In fact, most quality effects Deke teaches require multiple steps and a combination of tools to create an impressive final output.
PS CS3 One-On-One is an interesting combination of a medium to advanced users manual for Photoshop melded in with some great recipe-esque how to like guides for effects. Typically these two approaches are seen disparately in various books.
As you utilize this guide in your learn of Photoshop, you will feel like you have a personal tutorial and reference guide wrapped into one. Whether you are learning to improve images or create from scratch, you have it covered. If you are looking to master the essence of Photoshop as working professional, make this book part of your required reading.
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