Rating: 
Summary: Friendly, helpful, comprehensive book
Review: I am about a third though this book, as I intend to read it cover-to-cover! It is a helpful, informative and comprehensive book. I have a lot of reading time at my job, so I drag this book into work with me, and am reading a lot of it there. It is helpful and interesting. I feel like I am learning a lot, even when I am away from my computer, and can't be "hands-on" with Photoshop. (It's kind of hard to drag an iMac to work every day, so I just bring the book!)The tutorials are fun, and I feel like the author is there with me, urging me on. Everything is clear and easy to understand. There is a definite sense of humor in the book which I enjoy, though I understand that not everyone will. I do admit that I am not a big fan of emoticons, or cute little abbreviations like <lol> or <gr> (which mean "laugh out loud" and "grin") and I would not miss them if they were removed from this book. But hey - that is a small annoyance, and does not detract from the immense value and friendliness of this book. This is a Mighty Fine Photoshop book. I am on the newbie side when it comes to Photoshop, and I am finding it very helpful in pushing me to the "intermediate" stage in Photoshop expertise. The bundled CD is great as well.
Rating:
Summary: A great guide for learning photoshop
Review: I began reading this book with no Photoshop experience whatsoever, went through the whole thing and feel that I am now well versed in the program. The tutorials are easy to follow...I had problems on only one, which my friend tried and had no problem with (so that was just me). The humor can be corny at times but it does keep the book interesting. The focus on shortcut keys is an excellent feature...after going through it I know quite a few that makes the program faster to use and more enjoyable overall. There is not a great deal of focus on color adjustment...the large book just did not have time to go into it really deeply...but I got the basics. I might supplement it with another book that focuses more on this (there are plenty of entire books on that aspect). The tutorials are overall enjoyable and informative...my favorite was the one on surreal images, really fun. I have since used the program for a number of school projects with excellent results. It was well worth my money and time.
Rating:
Summary: A great guide for learning photoshop
Review: I began reading this book with no Photoshop experience whatsoever, went through the whole thing and feel that I am now well versed in the program. The tutorials are easy to follow...I had problems on only one, which my friend tried and had no problem with (so that was just me). The humor can be corny at times but it does keep the book interesting. The focus on shortcut keys is an excellent feature...after going through it I know quite a few that makes the program faster to use and more enjoyable overall. There is not a great deal of focus on color adjustment...the large book just did not have time to go into it really deeply...but I got the basics. I might supplement it with another book that focuses more on this (there are plenty of entire books on that aspect). The tutorials are overall enjoyable and informative...my favorite was the one on surreal images, really fun. I have since used the program for a number of school projects with excellent results. It was well worth my money and time.
Rating:
Summary: Gary Bouton - Your Still The Man
Review: I can't wait any longer to write my review of Gary's new book. No, I have not finished the book yet, but I have been through many pages and words describing Adobe's phenominal new product; Photoshop 6! As Gary pointed out, Photoshop 6 is a whole new ballgame. It's almost twice as large as Photoshop 5.5, but somehow 'friendlier'. Or at the very least, easier to use. I noticed that one reviewer complained about errors in the book. I want you to know that every time I saw what I thought was an error, it was my interpretation of what was being said. I bring a lot of paradigms to my reading and studying. A man doesn't give up a whole summer of his life to produce a piece of garbage. I'm trained in Photoshop because of Gary Bouton and his wife. In the early days I would read every word and do every lesson until I understood it. It has paid off. I don't have time for that anymore and I miss doing it. It was a right of passage for me. Now, with the new Photoshop, Gary has had to have help. This will give you an idea of the magnitude of this endeavor. It takes what I call a "3 inch" book to learn these new, heavy-hitter programs. I did the same thing with Adobe Illustrator. If you want to learn Adobe Photoshop, you are going to have to bite-the-bullet, as they say, and knuckle down and study it. I can think of no better book to do it with. I can think of no better author to do it with. Spend your money and your time wisely and purchase this book. In the future you will thank me for this review, and you will thank Gary Bouton and his helpers for all his/their hard work. Thank you Gary, you're still THE MAN.
Rating: 
Summary: Mistakes begone!
Review: I cited numerous errors in procedures, etc. in my first review. I then contacted New Riders. They said there were some changes made in 6.0.1, which I had been using. I retried some of the tutorials and found them to work as described. I don't know what changed, but the errors I found the first time around did not reoccur, even though I initially went through the tutorials a number of times with some lack of success. It is important to follow the steps precisely, which I believed I had done the first round, but seeing how the errors did not replicate themselves now, I may have been at fault. I change my rating to 4 stars now.
Rating:
Summary: Disgruntled in Delray
Review: I feel it is my duty to write this counter to the poor review this book has recieved. I found this book incredibly insightful. Photoshop 6 is the best multi-platform graphics program out there, so windows or mac matters very little. I also have a problem with anyone commenting on proofreading who makes 5 spelling errors in a 78 word document. To a graphics professional, this author is percieved as one of the gurus in the field. This book truly lives up to that reputation. The teaching style used does not merely teach how to use a program, but to create your own works, not simply imitate the examples presented in the book. I feel very strongly that this is one of the best books on photoshop out.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Have!
Review: I found this book to be one of the most useful books on Photoshop that I have read. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to get more out of their program. The author of the book not only knows what he is talking about, but he also has a wonderful ability to pass his knowledge on to the reader. I have used Photoshop for years and still learned alot from this book.
Rating:
Summary: The best on Photoshop 6
Review: I have recommended this book as THE book for students at the school where I work. It's really stuffed with information, and as far as I can see: MOSTLY all of it is correct.
The only ting I have complaints about, is the Image Ready and web part. The book starts off with (excuse the expression:) some nonsense about how things work on the Net. (I could not find it when writing this, but it said that you don't download javascript from the net, but you do with java, or something like that. A few other things about the Net issue that were wrong.)
I also miss the "digging deep" into Image Ready, when it comes to animations, the different ways of optimizing them (because there are new ways now in Image Ready, and some of them might give you a headache before you find your way...). I have not found that the book covers the options for optimizing animations that is now found under the arrow in the animations palette, and that is something I miss. (You will of course find it in the online userguide or the printed version that accompanies the application, but I think a book like this should have something on that specific issue.)
I'm sure the wrongs on HTML and so on, and what I'm missing on Image Ready will be fixed and present in the next edition!
For the rest of the book, I raise my hands and say: go get it! I like this one better than the vs. 6 Bible, because of the practical way of teaching, AND all the information we are getting by reading it. (Who knew who originally owned the TIF-image format? Dig into that part, and think for yourself about the future of that format. Maybe Adobe's competitor will make a version that is platform independent?)
That's for comparing.
Have a great time with a great book!
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginning!!!
Review: I love this book. Gary Bouton's approach is so awesome. The tutorials are easy to follow and fun. I learned more than just how to complete the tutorial. I felt like I could apply the things I learned to my own projects. Having never used Photoshop before, I was really intimidated. It looked so complex. Now that I have Gary's book I feel good about the software. I know which tools are which and I have no problem using them on my own work. I recommend this book highly!
Rating: 
Summary: error city
Review: I read reviews of various books, and this looked pretty good. I bought it and started to use it, and was finding error after error, whether it was in a procedure or in a shortcut key process. The book is helpful in its tutorial set-up, but it does not cover the newest changes in 6.0 as thoroughly as I would have preferred. I am disappointed in it, but will keep it for its tutorials. I did figure out a number of procedures on my own. Maybe it was written with errors to test one's knowledge of Photoshop, but I don't think so. I already e-mailed New Riders about this. Try Visual Quickstart Guide by Weinmann and Lourekas- just bought it-excellent.!
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