Photoshop 6 for Dummies

I strongly reccomend the Photoshop WOW! series, as well as Down and Dirty Tricks.... great for beginners who would appreciate tons of full-color visual tutorials and examples. Glass of drinking water optional :)


It should be subtitled (for computer experts only)   May 19, 2003
 10 out of 11 found this review helpful

I have been a pen & brush graphics artist all of my life. Now that I have retired, I decided to try computer image manipulation. I bought this book in the hopes of learning to recolor, flip, distort, or whatever via my computer (I just got my first one in 2000)and have found it maddening to use. The authors gloss over information vital to a basic understanding of Photoshop and then blithely show highly advanced image techniques that cannot be duplicated without the underlying knowledge. It pretends to being step-by-step, but ignores crucial steps. For example, a complex collage is created using a number of disparate images: how did they select only that portion of the original? How did they make the surrounding parts of the image transparent so the background shows through? This are the most basic maneuvers, but a couple of months with the book left me unenlightened. I have since found another book that delivers on the premise of this one, Photoshop 6 In An Instant by Toot & Woolridge, and am now happily photoshopping away -- this despite the fact that Photoshop 6 for Dummies was more ... and has many pages of color illustration, in contrast to Photoshop 6 In An Instant's reliance on B&W even to show color manipulation!


Not Appropriately Targeted   October 26, 2002
 19 out of 20 found this review helpful

This book purports to be about "photoshop 6 for dummies," but it really isn't much help for real dummies. If you assume that most photoshop beginners, dummies if you will, are most interested in working with their own photographs, this book is of limited utility. It's terrific in discussing graphics and technical points; none of which has anything to do with working with photographs that may have red eye, have faded, need touching up in a variety of ways or even more basic information, like how a "dummy" should take advantage of Photoshop's organizational features. It's not that this is a bad book--indeed, the reverse is true. It's just not much help for the group its supposedly targeted.

barry anderson


Author Stars In Another Medium; not this one   July 2, 2002
 12 out of 13 found this review helpful

I do not care for this Dummies' approach to Photoshop at all. It is very non-visual and it is laced heavily throughout with attempts at humor, all of which should have been editied out of the book. However, I've discovered that this author's, McClelland's, strength is not here but in the videotape series he does for Adobe, some of which can be seen online at Adobe's main site. I've taken some of his tutorials there and they are excellent and extremely visual. My guess is that he got locked into this Dummies' book format, which may have worked for another topic, but does not work for learning the most visual graphics program in the computer world. Bypass this product and investigate this author in other, visual media he uses for teaching you Photoshop instead.