Photoshop 7 Bible, Professional Edition

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 672 pages
• Published by: Wiley; Pro edition November 1, 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 076451993X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0764519932
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Weighs: 3.7 pounds

Scott Kelby, President, National Association of Photoshop Professionals
"The Photoshop 7 Bible, Professional Edition belongs on EVERY designer's bookshelf--it's that indespensable."

Product Description
* Picks up where the classic Photoshop 7 Bible (0-7645-3694-X) ends, with bonus color pages and topics for highend users
* Graphic artists and Web designers will flock to this special Bible edition-a peerless professional resource from a bestselling Photoshop guru
* Includes 320 color pages of exciting images and instruction for the experienced user
* Provides expanded coverage of advanced topics such as creating and optimizing Web graphics, using filters, convolution kernels and displacement maps, actions and batch processing, ImageReady, and more

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Photoshop 7 Bible (Paperback) After dabbling in Photoshop for a while the thing that has become most clear to me is that it isn't an easy program to learn, and no doubt it isn't an easy one to explain either. So I won't blame Deke McClelland for not turning me into a Photoshop genius overnight (which he didn't) - but even if that is too much to expect of any book, this one is a mixed bag in more ways than that. On the plus side, it certainly is comprehensive. Just about every option available in Photoshop is explained - and that is the major downside at the same time. This book is very much written from the viewpoint of the program, not that of the user. If you want to know how to achieve a particular effect, you will just have to browse the 1000+ pages hoping you will stumble on the right tools. Reversely, you may read many an explanation of a tool without ever getting into the clear why you would want to use it. For instance, the chapters on selections, paths and masks made it abundantly clear to me that there are some 5,000 or so ways of selecting part of an image in Photoshop, but I remained in the dark as to which ones are useful under which circumstances. Much of the text on paths and masks actually seemed highly esoteric to me. I can understand that it is impossible to illustrate each and every option visually, but unfortunately the illustrative examples that are given often don't seem to be very compelling (e.g., the possible use of stroking a path is demonstrated by the creation of a tapering line underneath an image of a planet, an effect that could just as easily have been achieved with a simple paint brush.) In fact (and ironically), the graphics are one of the major weaknesses of the book (just take a peek at the hideous cover!). I found them mostly unimaginative, and often too small and badly printed to show up the differences between several effects they were supposed to demonstrate. The accessibility of the book is not helped by the fact that after introducing a function, the author stops naming it and reverts to a mere mention of the keyboard shortcut - so when you're new to this, soon enough you no longer know what he is doing (also, I would urge the publisher to please create separate Windows and Mac editions of this book: the ubiquitous additions of the Mac alternative to Windows shortcuts is highly irritating!). The order of chapters/subjects doesn't seem to be guided by any pedagogical considerations. Layers are not discussed until page 633, even though (as everyone who has ever tried Photoshop or any similar program knows) you really can't do anything at all without an understanding of this function. The style of writing is informal and chatty, and by page 500 or thereabouts the author's facetiousness started to wear thin on me. Maybe after I have gained more experience with Photoshop I will come to appreciate more of McClelland's suggestions. However, as a novice, plowing through this book yielded to me no more than 8 or 9 new insights that I found directly useful.