Chapter 1,309 - How I purchase a really good book

[luka91]

I saw an interesting book about Photoshop some time ago. I thought it a touch expensive, so I never bought it, because I didn't know if I could afford it.

Today I went to the bookstore to look for something else, which they didn't have, and essentially on impulse (and partly because redpirk had bought a Photoshop book) I bought this book

Comments

[luka91]

Well.. most other books mark out the Brush tool, as an example, and then go on telling you that.. "This is the Brush Tool, With that, you can paint on the image"

or..

"This is the Text tool. You use that to type text on the image"

What I meant is that. It don't have 200 pages listing every single feature in Photoshop etc.

Instead it say: "Do you want to extract a human, or an object from the background? Well..

Step 1: Then you go to the Filter Menu and pick "Extract". That'll give you a preview/dialog.

Step 2:You select the pen (The tool furthest up in the Extract tool palette) and then you paint along the contour. Use a fine pen when the contour is simple and strong (You set the size to the right in the tool settings). Use a thicker pen when there's a lot of small details such as hair.

Step 3:Use the fill tool (Second in the tool palette). Click in the area you want to keep, which should fill with a blue "mask"

Step 4: Use PREVIEW to see if it looks ok, if it does, click OK

That way, all features are indirectly explained by how you use them, not explaining what you can do with this or that tool.

That way, you'll pick up ways to do certain things, as well as get a feel for what the tools do

The book is essentially task driven, as in.. Say that you get a task shooting a flower for a magazine.

Instead of making you guess what tools might be useful etc, it tells you..

You come home from having photographing that flower, you upload the picture to the computer.

It then tells you.. Burn the images to a CD, first thing. Then assign keywords and file info in the Browser. Then.. look at the images? Something wrong with them?

Hmm.. The color is slightly off. It could be sharper. The background is slightly messy.

Then you go to the chapters: "How to fix color", where you get a step by step guide how to set the colors straight, or to your liking.

You then go to the next chapter: "Sharpness", select the method that works best for your image and set the values given in the book.

Etc.

What the book doesn't do, is having a 100 page long chapter on "Color", where it use 25 pages explaining how colors work. What tools are avaible in Photoshop to ajdust colors, and then spend 5 pages giving you an example of how you can do it, and what happens when you do it and why.

This book sort of mimics a process, in the order one would do it.

Back up images

Sort and select images

Crop and resize

Fix Exposure problems, such as red eyes, underexposure, flat image, digital noise etc

Fix the Color

That should give you the image which is the way you thought of it when photographing.

Then it goes on to explain if you want to manipulate the image. How to change background, by extracting the objects. Retouch portraits etc. Rebuild bodies.

Until you end up with the picture you want to present to the buyer, when it tells you how to watermark and copyright the image, show the customer the images on a computer, create a portfolio etc.