Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 Idea Kit (Idea Kit)

Rating:
Summary: You can use this on 2 levels
Review: Adobe Systems' main product is Photoshop. So to gin up sales and usage, they want to offer many handy ideas that add value to it. Thus one of their employees, Matthews, came up with this slender guide. Unsurprisingly, the information is laid out very clearly for the reader, given that Photoshop is about visual presentation of images and text.

The design tips are given in a nontechnical prose, for a general audience. There are two levels at which you can use this book. Firstly, and obviously, for the tips themselves. But at a metalevel, look carefully at how she arranges her graphics and text. A clean and minimalist design, that does not attempt to overwhelm the reader on any given page. Uncluttered. Quite unlike, say, Wired magazine. So you can try using this book as an implicit design document for your own work. Most readers will never try this, even though it's right in front of them.

Rating:
Summary: Software not included
Review: I agree with the editorial statement, "Best of all, the companion CD includes ... and a trial version of the software". However, my recently arrived copy does not include a trial of PSE 3.0.

I look forward to working my way through the book but first I have to buy the software! I was 90% sure that I would end up purchasing PSE 3.0 anyway so this is a somewhat minor annoyance.

For those of you who wanted to try PSE 3.0 before shelling out $100, look elsewhere.