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Posted on 22/05/06 02:47:39 AM |
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michael sinclair
Off-Topic Opportunist Posts: 1869 Reply  |
A qualified appraisal of How to cheat in Photoshop--an opinion
To avoid banal patronage of saying things like "It's a great book" etc, I will qualify myself as to why I think my "opinion" has validity. Forgive the apparent digression, but for me this is deja vu all over again when I left school without an education through no fault of mine in the seventies; consequently, I like many others were left "semi-literate" without knowing it, and although I'm 52 years old now, I started learning English grammar about 11 years ago. However, I was not in any kind of position to know which were the good books and which were the bad, so I progressively purchased all those books that appealed to me. By the time I had bought 30 books, I was beginning to know how hard it was to really understand grammar: was it me or was it the authors who understood their subject, but failed to relate it to those who had no grounding on the subject? Anyway, another 30 books later over a period of five years enabled me to finally (split infinitive?) see the light by cross-referencing information omitted from one book but added to another: piecing all the missing links together as it were. The upshot of all this that by understanding grammar gave me the power of discrimination of realising that about a third of the books were useless, and some of those written by people who either knew nothing of the subject, or who knew nothing of the art of communicating. Today I have fifteen books on Photoshop/Elements, and most of those are CS2 content. I have had to start at the very bottom of a very steep learning curve, compounded by the fact that I jumped in at the deep end (without knowing it) by reading first Martin Evening's Photoshop CS2 for photographers. This book (the biggest of all the books) contains a fantastic amount of information, but alas--in spite of imparted wisdom and insights--the explanations were compressed and terse with no room to breathe and elaborate the incredible complexity that is Photoshop CS2. Not for the beginner I fear! I needed to get down to the basics before I got any further, so I bought the wonderful Photoshop CS2 Quick Steps with its "You hold the pencil this way up" rationale. Now I was ready to explore the inner workings of Photoshop, and although I ran my fingers sensuously through the tantalizing pages of How to cheat in Photoshop, I still needed another another slant or insight into photoshop, so I'm reading the second-best book on photoshop CS2 by Mark Galer and Philip Andrews entitled PhotoshopCS2: essential skills. I have to say they have gone out of their way to make you understand by superb step-by step illustrations. This is an outstanding book. However, I'm at pains to point out the following facts and points: Steve's book is unique: it has no rival; moreover, steve's book provided additional information on displacement maps and filters: a case in point was informing the reader that upon clicking OK would bring an additional dialogue box asking you to load the displacement map, whereas in the other book there is a a hiatus in which the reader is left guessing as to what does one do after OK is clicked. My earnest recommendation--therefore--is to buy PhotoshopCS2: essential skills to fully understand the inner workings of PhotoshopCS2, and that having being achieved to proceed to the sumptuous dessert that is uniquely Steve Caplin's How to Cheat in PhotoshopCS2. Mike  |