Rating: 
Summary: The Number One Choice for Learning Elements!
Review: Photoshop Elements can be a daunting program for a new user, but there's help out there in the form of "Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions", by Mikkel Aaland. The earlier version of this excellent book was my first purchase after acquiring Elements, and it turned out to be a very fortunate choice. The book takes you gently and carefully through all the key tools and processes of Elements, guiding you through a combination of clearly written text and easy-to-follow examples. The depth is just right for a new user, yet it's also a book that an intermediate user will return to again and again as new editing challenges arise. After getting up to speed with the first edition and Elements 1.0, I moved up to Elements 2.0 and, once again, Mikkel Aaland was there with a revised edition of his classic. The treatment of the differences between the versions is particularly good, highlighted by a comprehensive summary of the changes that provides a quick overview of what's new and improved. As a participant on Adobe's Photoshop Elements forum, I'm often asked to recommend a book to new users of the program; my answer is always the same: "Solutions" by Aaland.
Rating:
Summary: Big Information for a relatively small prices
Review: PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS2 SOLUTIONS
The Art of Digital Photography
AUTHOR: Mikkel Aaland
PUBLISHER: Sybex
REVIEWED BY: Barbara Rhoades BOOK REVIEW: Photoshop is a powerful program and this book gives the reader many suggestions on how to enhance their photographs. The CD is almost as good as the book. There are 15 different software downloads to help Photoshop create pictures to almost perfect perfection. "Photoshop Elements2 Solutions" has all the normal things a teaching book should have. How-to's on cropping, straightening, resizing, changing colors and fixing "bad" spots on pictures. It also tells how to improve backgrounds, add motion blur or depth, swapping images, moving items from the picture, and creating panoramics. The author hasn't forgotten a section on text and even has a chapter on the web. Optimizing images by compression, using printers and photo services, and a reference section on layers, effects, tools, etc. Here is a good book to have to help make your use of Photoshop that much easier. It is written in a step-by-step fashion with plenty of sidebar notes and visual aids. The ... price gives you a lot for your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Overly Elementary, my dear Mr. Aaland
Review: PS-Elements is a beautiful book, richly illustrated in color, lots of very good color pictures, unlike most of the Adobe-produced tomes. Unfortunately, it's marred by too much jumping around, a very weak explanation of using layers, and far too much emphasis on producing business-oriented products, a task better suited to the full Photoshop program. In addition, the author tosses off color management in a few lines here and there. That's a terrible shame, because color management is the single least well explained but most crucial link in going from what appears on a slide or a negative and getting a picture worth hanging on the wall. Just some examples which Aaland never takes into account: When should you allow the printer to do color management, and when must you take things into your own hand? What do you do to calibrate a third-party inkjet paper which isn't listed on your printer driver? How do you get consistency, so that you can predict the changes on paper from the changes on the monitor screen? And he wastes far too much ink on things like making a fat kid look thin, giving a baby really big bloated eyeballs, or compensating for ordinary optical distortion such as wide angle lenses produce. Indeed, he calls this an effect of "bad optics." Nonsense. The most expensive wide angle lenses I own produce the effects; it's just geometry. Aaland also forgets that many of us get our images into digital form through a film or flatbed scanner. He needs a lot more attention to that process and how to calibrate the scanner to the monitor. He seems to assume that all of Photoshop Elements' users will use digital cameras -- a real mistake. Don't buy the book. Get "Hidden Secrets of Photoshop Elements 2" instead, read the excellent manual Adobe packed with the program, and practice.
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Summary: Practical Solutions to Your Photoshop Elements Problems
Review: The new scanner that I bought a few months ago, came bundled with Photoshop Elements. I was happy at first to see this scaled-down version of Adobe's Photoshop, but my delight soon turned into frustration when I tried to use it. Sure, I could do the simple things with moderate success, but the full power of this amazing software was beyond my reach. That is until I bought Mikkel Aaland's wonderful book, Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions, The Art of Digital Photography. Mr. Aaland must have had me in mind when he created this book, because his "solutions" were the answers to my very problems. He cleared away the barriers that prevented my making the sharp, bright images that I wanted. He provides step by step instructions that anyone can follow. It was as if I was priviledged to have a Photoshop expert looking over my shoulder has I worked on restoring my old images. The book comes with a CD that contains the images Mr. Aaland uses as examples in his book. But the book is so well written that you can use your own photos to follow his instruction. Without this book, I never would have discovered the time-saving utilities in Photoshop Elements. I'm running a photo contest in my community and was facing many hours of resampling images to post on the web. Mr. Aaland's Solutions showed me how to to it in minutes, not days. Other instruction books on how to use software are notoriously heavy, dull, and repetitive. They focus on the tools and not the tasks. Not this one. It's open, easy-to-read layout makes you want to read it straight through. My thanks to Mikkel Aaland for producing such a fine book.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME! but it's not for novice PSE2 users
Review: This handsomely produced tutorial, with color photo's and screen shots on just about every page of quality paper, is THE way to progress from mid-beginner level to skilled user - with the option to become an advanced professional given enough time. As one can tell from the mixed reviews, this is NOT a newbie's introduction to PSE2. Some basic comfort (but not necessarily expertise) with Tools, Selections, Help system, Palette Well and Layers is essential. Sybex marketing includes beginners in its blurb - you'd be disappointed and very frustratred. Once you have the basics under your belt, however, and realize the need to go beyond PSE2's nice (but limited) QuickFix command choices, this book will get you there. The accompanying CD has every technique covered with a work-along image; so you don't waste time downloading (often incomplete) chapter images from a website. Clearly, the author has spent a great deal of time and thought on effectively communicating his vast experience. After presenting general principles of 'cleaning up' that will benefit most any digital image, come well-organized chapters arranged by topics so you can concentrate on specifics: portraits, landscapes, buildings (including real estate photography), objects, composites, panoramas, etc. With the wealth of approaches to solving particular problems, you'd better plan on spending some time - but it's time well spent. The many uses of layers are explored so thoroughly (including workarounds) that the difference between professional Photoshop and Elements virtually vanishes. PC and Mac users are served equally well by this book. There are literally hundreds of tips and techniques buried in this book - but, to repeat, it will take patience and determination on the reader's part to get all you can out of this book. Coupled with a good introductory text (and I haven't found one yet), the program's excellent tutorials, and Adobe's top-notch help system, this book will take you all the way to the top. Of the several dozen PSE2 books I have read, Mikkel Aaland's book is my top recommendation. Other authors seem more interested in quantity than in quality, and few have taken that extra step to combine high-quality production with a complete image gallery on CD in an inexpensive yet most attractive and readable package. Addendum: Now that I've made the first runthrough of the book (took me some 6 weeks!) I am all the more impressed with this author's presentation, and the publisher's production. This is a veritable storehouse of literally hundreds (not just 40 or 50 or 99 or 106) techniques, alternative approaches, hints, tricks, insider secrets and pearls of wisdom I haven't found anywhere else. I'm going back for seconds in special areas such as portrait retouching and web optimization and am astounded by the new things I hadn't absorbed the first time around. Aaland's "PSE2 Solutions", combined with Lynch's "Hidden Power of PSE2" (and the Power-User Tools on that CD) will elevate you to PSE2 expert in far less time than it took these authors to learn the long hard way. My original caption of AWESOME probably doesn't do Mikkel Aaland full justice for the hard work and enormous effort expended to pass on his knowledge; I, for one, truly appreciate finding a lifetime's experience condensed in compactly readable (and viewable) form.
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative Book!
Review: This is a very informative book! It gives the reader the latest step by step information, and great tips. If you use digital photography or scanning images of photography, weather on a professional level or a hobby, this is truly the book for you. It gives great info on cropping, resizing changing colors, straightening and fixing photos. Adding motion blur, swapping images, moving items and how to make better backgrounds. For both the PC and MAC user. Lots of visual aids, and has plenty of sidebar notes. This book lets you make the most out of software for the minimal cost to get this job done. A penny well spent!
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative Book!
Review: This is a very informative book! It gives the reader the latest step by step information, and great tips. If you use digital photography or scanning images of photography, weather on a professional level or a hobby, this is truly the book for you. It gives great info on cropping, resizing changing colors, straightening and fixing photos. Adding motion blur, swapping images, moving items and how to make better backgrounds. For both the PC and MAC user. Lots of visual aids, and has plenty of sidebar notes. This book lets you make the most out of software for the minimal cost to get this job done. A penny well spent!
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Summary: Best Way To Learn Photoshop Elements 2!
Review: This is a wonderfully written and super informative book. Recently I bought Photoshop Elements 2 and just dived right into it with this book, without first checking the manual or other sources. It was an easy and fun way to learn the program. As a psychology professor, I often determine if instructional texts are written with the student in mind. Mikkel Aaland certainly did that every step of the way in this book, such as, repeating the same steps as they occurred in each subsection, so the reader doesn't have to look back in the book to find the steps. From what I can tell, this is not often done in instruction books on digital photography or computer programs. When I wasn't sure why Mikkel Aalnad did what he did in the book, even though I was able to do it, I checked the manual after completing the steps in the book. The explanation in the program manual typically made a lot of sense to me, after using a particular tool or technique from the book. I found it much easier to understand a tool or technique, once I had gone through the steps and had seen the result. One example of this is the use of a layer with a gradient mask and relating the gradient to black and white colors. I don't believe I would have been able to understand the sketchy way all of that is presented in the program manual without first having done it and seen the results using this book. This is a must have book for someone starting out with Photoshop Elements. More advanced users will also pick up some valuable techniques from the book.
Rating: 
Summary: OK - but...
Review: This is a wordy introduction to Elements 2. Mr. Aaland provides a good rationale for improvement with photographs and how they may be accomplished. This is important - as it is not immediately obvious what improvements need to be made to a photograph when starting out in digital photography. However, his approach is wordy - and you have to plough through a lot of (unnecessary) text to go through the individual steps. Some people like wordy explanations, others a more visual guide to a visual medium. Secondly, and this is a personal feeling, it is clear that Mr. Aaland makes his living by writing computer manuals and not in graphics or as a photographer. The photographs supplied on the CD and in the book are of the mundane snapshot variety. This may be fine if you are simply working on mundane snapshots - however, for me (and I am sure others), I am looking for approaches to improve more artistic photographs. (If you are looking for help with this and you are visiting the UK, I recommend you buy a copy of Digital Photo magazine [not Digital Photography or other similarly named magazines] - you will get a lot of clearly, explained advice there). So a mixed bag. If you are looking for a reasonable comprehensive 'textbook' on PE2 then consider this. If you are through the basics and are looking for a deeper explanation of advanced features and artistic management, then I suggest you look elsewhere. For me, the book falls short of my needs and interests and the CD photographs are disappointing. Hope this helps!
Rating:
Summary: OK - but...
Review: This is a wordy introduction to Elements 2. Mr. Aaland provides a good rationale for improvement with photographs and how they may be accomplished. This is important - as it is not immediately obvious what improvements need to be made to a photograph when starting out in digital photography. However, his approach is wordy - and you have to plough through a lot of (unnecessary) text to go through the individual steps. Some people like wordy explanations, others a more visual guide to a visual medium. Secondly, and this is a personal feeling, it is clear that Mr. Aaland makes his living by writing computer manuals and not in graphics or as a photographer. The photographs supplied on the CD and in the book are of the mundane snapshot variety. This may be fine if you are simply working on mundane snapshots - however, for me (and I am sure others), I am looking for approaches to improve more artistic photographs. (If you are looking for help with this and you are visiting the UK, I recommend you buy a copy of Digital Photo magazine [not Digital Photography or other similarly named magazines] - you will get a lot of clearly, explained advice there). So a mixed bag. If you are looking for a reasonable comprehensive 'textbook' on PE2 then consider this. If you are through the basics and are looking for a deeper explanation of advanced features and artistic management, then I suggest you look elsewhere. For me, the book falls short of my needs and interests and the CD photographs are disappointing. Hope this helps!
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