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| Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-On-One | 
 enlarge | Author: Deke Mcclelland
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $29.92
You Save: $20.07 (40%)
Buy New/Used from $19.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  (37 reviews)
Sales Rank: 1072
Format: Illustrated
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/Dvdr
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.8
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0596529759
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.686
EAN: 9780596529758
ASIN: 0596529759
Publication Date: June 15, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 detailed & comprehensive May 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is very detailed and easy to follow. The videos before each chapter ease you into this great learning curve.
Jump right in May 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It didn't take long after installing my new copy of Photoshop for me to feel a bit overwhelmed with the software. I kept finding myself saying things like "I KNOW Photoshop can do this, but I can't for the life of me figure out how." I visited various web sites, read little blurbs here and there, and picked up lots of good tricks, but I still didn't feel like I really knew how to use this tool. I decided to get this book. I LOVED it. There's still plenty of Photoshop functions that I haven't explored yet, but all of the really useful ones are covered in this book.
There are a few things in this book that even an experienced Photoshop user may not have known, but only a very few. Most of the book is for people like me who need to start from the ground up.
Deke is a great technical writer--his instructions are easy to follow, there's lots of information packed into each lesson, and he still manages to be entertaining. If I had any complaints about the book, it would be these two things: 1. I enjoyed the lessons so much, I want to know more--500 pages is a good start, but let's have some more (even if it is less useful)! 2. This book came from earlier versions of Photoshop and as such, every now and then there will be a screen shot or a picture of a button or something that looks slightly different than what shows up on my screen. Not a big deal, but it threw me off for a few seconds. Despite these 2 things, I still rate the book 5 stars for a beginner audience, like I used to be.
Excellent Way to Learn Photoshop CS3 April 27, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thought this book was fantastic and worth every dollar. The book is a "you-do-it-yourself" tutorial book covering navigation and Bridge, adjusting contrast and color balance, making selections and masks, cropping and sizing, filters, how to paint and heal, using text and shapes, along with chapters dealing with layers and layer adjustments and effects. And that's just some of the topics. It doesn't cover every tool and feature in CS3 - just the most useful - and thank goodness or it would be a massive undertaking to get through!
I spent well over 80 hours watching the 3+ hours worth of high quality video, reading the text and explanations, and following through all the detailed exercises. A DVD accompanies the book and includes the videos and all photographs that are used in the exercises. The DVD worked for me with no problems. The full color book includes photos of what your work should look like during various stages of the exercises so it's easy to get positive reinforcement that you're doing it correctly. All my exercises were successful in the end.
I probably loved this book so much because it was just what I was looking for: a hands-on method for a Photoshop beginner to learn about the tools and features in Photoshop CS3 as a whole. Those who are interested in looking for a step-by-step workflow to, say, touch up digital photos will probably want to look for a different book. This book definately covers some of those techniques, and you'll know how to do it in the end (plus a lot more), but it's goal is to cover the entire gamut of Photoshop software features.
The full color book is well organized and easy to follow. I went in order from Chapter 1 through Chapter 12, starting with how to navigate through Photoshop and finishing with how to print your images. At the end of each chapter is a written test to see how much you learned. Also throughout the book are many keyboard shortcuts which really speed things up. In the dozens of hours of exercises and detailed explanations, I found only 2 or 3 typos/errors and these were in the keyboard shortcut commands and I easily figured out the correct ones.
I highly recommend this book for anyone that has taken a quick look at Photoshop and doesn't know how to start learning it.
 Disjointed, confusing, and April 12, 2008
4 out of 12 found this review helpful
I've been playing with Photoshop for a couple years now, but not really understanding what I was doing.
The book started out strong, and I even learned a few things about what makes an image work in the first place. I also like how he walks you through everything step by step.
But then it starts to fall apart.
The first place I had issue was with the chapter/section on coloring and painting. The basic exercise was to color a line drawing of a butterfly which is fine.
The problem starts when he wants to make the butterfly more interesting. He has the reader going through all sorts of other steps that make use of very powerful (and often complicated) Photoshop featuers (layers, masks, etc). This does absolutely nothing to enhance the lesson and just made the thing feel tedious. In his defense, the images you load do come reasonably pre-set for all this. But the introduction of a new feature only serves to muddy the waters and delay the reader from getting on with things.
It gets worse when we get to quick masks. At this point, the step by step exercises start to degrade in quality and clarity and take on a random feel to them.
At this point (around half-way through the book), I just got tired of the whole thing.
The fact is that many topics in Photoshop require actual explanations, not simply walk-throughs. While his videos do some of that, the further you get in the book, the less actual information is given.
I am now using the chapter organization to find online tutorials. There's a number of video tutorials out there that will serve you MUCH better than this text will.
It is possible, I suppose, that in the later chapters, where he introduces some of the more artistic aspects of Photoshop, he gets his act together. But I'm not going to waste my time on that hope.
I seriously suggest making use of the FREE online resources out there and not paying for this book.
 Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-On-One by Deke McClelland April 6, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
I found this book interesting but not of much use for a photographer. His exercises were too unrealistic and delved too much into art rather than photography for me. Where he did use real life work, he offered specific settings without sufficient underlying explanation or information to allow me to generalise them into my work.
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