In typical DekeMcClelland style, the step-by-step descriptions are detailed, understandable, and precise. This is not your typical Photoshop manual: it really reads like a well thought-out tutorial on how to use Photoshop CS4 capabilities in the context of a logical image correcting workflow. The prose is almost conversational, as though the reader was sitting in a workshop and the book was doing the talking. I think the procedures described and their order (Deke’s prescribed PSCS4 workflow) is excellent.
The book comes with an excellent disc containing several hours of video tutorials from Lydia.com. These are very well done and complement the book beautifully. These are real, detailed tutorials and not snippets: you’ll learn from them. Between the tutorials and the lessons in the book, I really felt like I’d gotten a “one-on-one” course in Photoshop, and my ability to edit photos was definitely improved. The discussions on masks and the uses of layers were terrific.
One-on-One is more of a series of detailed lessons than a reference book. I appreciated the clear descriptions of how tools worked and why the author chose particular sequences and ways of doing things. A small nit: while all tools and capabilities seem to be represented in the index, some corresponding techniques are not. For example, “free transform” is there, but “transform” is not.
I found many of the “Sidebar” comments—which are often 1-2 pages long—distracting. The problem isn’t the content, which is invariably very useful: the problem is where the sidebars fall. Too often a sidebar will be placed between two pages of a detailed procedure or other discussion. I found this placement distracting. At other times, sidebars are politely placed between logical discussions and their pages referenced in the text. After encountering a number of distractingly placed sidebars, I found myself wishing that they’d been appended to the chapters and referenced appropriately.
As a long-time, “somewhere between beginner and intermediate” Photoshop user, I’d readily recommend this book to people new to image editing and to new PSCS4 users, even if you’ve used earlier versions of Photoshop. The book is written with a friendly, informative, and accessible style and the content should appeal to many beginning and intermediate Photoshop users.
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