Photoshop 5 Bible: Gold Edition

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 944 pages
• Published by: Hungry Minds May 1999
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 076453372X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0764533723
• Book Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.5 x 2.4 inches
• Weighs: 4.8 pounds

Reader Reviews
All books on computer software can generally be divided in two groups: manuals, which describe all features of the program in a condensed (encyclopedic) form, and tutorials, which guide the readers through a sequence of steps to teach them how to perform either basic or advanced functions. Good manuals are concise, accurate, and comprehensive. They can be used over and over again to look up the necessary function or keyboard shortcut. Tutorials are usually wordy, cover only selected functions of the program, but frequently go far beyond the basics by showing examples how to achieve non-trivial effects. A large number of exercises is a must for a tutorial. The problem of "Photoshop Bible" is that although this book is essentially a manual, it is written in the wordy style of a tutorial; on the other hand, it is not quite up to the standards of tutorials either. It is a manual because with a very few exceptions it only discusses the functions and applications of each single menu item of Photoshop. To be fair, I must admit that this it is done on a very detailed level, which makes this book one of the most information-filled and comprehensive guides on Photoshop. I was truly impressed by the author's level of knowledge and experience with Photoshop. The problem is that the book is not particularly reader-friendly: it takes enormous effort and time to digest and memorize all those practical tips and tricks offered by Deke McClelland. There are reasons for that. To begin with, the book is poorly organized. The first 300 pages or so are mostly useless and deserve to be in the appendix. I bet that 95% of average Photoshop users will never see pantone swatches, will never try duotone printing, and will not spent any significant time importing all these graphics formats that Photoshop can read. Recording scripts and 15-page-long table of shortcuts probably should not be on the first pages, either. Nonetheless, all this stuff takes the first third of the book. One can easily get bored before getting to the real stuff. Another thing that bugged me a lot are tutorial files. The books comes with a CD-ROM, and it does contain some tutorial files, but they are very well hidden in the directory structure among other pieces or Photoshop artwork. Furthermore, neither their names nor the folder name suggest that they are tutorials. I discovered them accidentally when I was on the page 400 or so. Apparently, the author's idea was that the readers should realize what kind of fools they are only at the very end since the first page where these tutorial files are mentioned is the LAST page of the text. About 800 preceding pages NEVER mention a single name of a tutorial file, and it is up to the reader to figure out whether a particular picture is included as a file, what the name of this file is, and where to find it on the disk. The fact that all files need type and color space conversion, and that their resolution appears to be much higher than the one use by the author, so if the book says "feature the selection by 2 pixels", you should probably go for ten to reach a similar effect, only adds to the confusion. The bootom line is that even if you find and use all tutorial files on the CD-ROM, they are still not sufficient to learn everything by doing. I spent 6 weeks reading this book every evening, I learned a lot, but I got overwhelmed to an even greater extent. My personal opinion: The author probably spent at least a year putting this huge book together. He has done a great work, but he left it unfinished. Had he spent another month rearranging the chapters and preparing the tutorial files and practical exercises to meet the readers expectations (and the standards of computer literature), it would be a fantastic book. In its present form, I am not sure that it is worth spending your money, and most important, your time. This book dumps lots of data on you, but does not help you much to learn it. Comment | | (Report this)