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 enlarge | Author: Scott Kelby
Publisher: New Riders Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $4.80
You Save: $25.19 (84%)
New (11) Used (16) from $4.80
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 416697
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 10 x 8 x 0.7
ISBN: 0735713928
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.6869
UPC: 752064713920
EAN: 9780735713925
ASIN: 0735713928
Publication Date: August 11, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: NICE Softcover Book * Moderate signs of use inside and out - May contain name/inscription - No writing/highlighting - Front cover torn & taped * Ships USPS Media Mail in Padded Envelope.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Excellent Book for Improving Basic Skills September 22, 2004
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is the third (and best) Photoshop Elements 2 book that I have bought and used. It is not (and does not claim to be) a simple introductory guide to PSE, rather an excellent tool for teaching helpful techniques, new skills and tips. It is full of pragmatic, helpful details and the book is broken into small, logical bites - each addressing a single "how to" topic.
The quality of the photography is excellent (which stimulates creative thought in the reader); the text is simple and well laid out adjacent to the appropriate illustrative step.
The book is full of specific useful tips. Many books give general instructions about using the Unsharp Mask (a really important, non-intuitive, poorly named feature for photographers). This books gives clear recommendations for several different photographic 'situations'.
Mr. Kelby's humor is attacked by some reviewers. I imagine that he uses these jokes in his successful live courses and presentations. I found him quite amusing and his jokes to be harmless fillers.
The best PSE book that I have seen - and ideal for the photographer wanting to get well beyond the basic techniques.
Strongly recommended.
Outstanding book! September 18, 2004
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have bought a number of books to help me maximize Elements. This is the very best book by far.
One of the most useful books I own September 15, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book will save your hours of time. Step-by-step, cook book style, but this is exactlt what I wanted.
 Excellent for the Beginner User August 28, 2004
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
I have been using Digital Image Pro since my entree into digital photography and have been quite pleased with their point and click approach. However, the more I read the more I realize that there are many more options for image enhancement that could produce better quality pictures, especially with skin tones and removing that yellow glow on indoor theatre shots. Adobe Photoshop is repeatedly recommended and after deciding that the full blown program was way more than I need, I settled on PS Elements and have been completely baffled! After reading reviews on many help books, I settled on this one and I feel like have have gained a new vision. The book is organzied by the most common fixes and enhancements and provides a step by step approach that is easy to follow and voila! the fix is successful.
So why not 5 stars? My only complaint is that it could use a little more explanation of what is being done. You can produce the desired results by following his steps exactly but I'm not really sure what I've done. However, I figure that after using the program for a while, I'll better understand the "whys and whats." If not, I'll look into a book that better explains the terminology and basic features. The author starts out declaring that this book is not intended to provide these basics but I do think one brief chapter along these lines could have been included. Otherwise, this book is fantastic and finally, I can use my PS Elements program!
One of the best books on Elements August 20, 2004
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book. I've now purchased and read five different books on Photoshop Elements. There seem to be two basic kinds of books. The first kind of book focuses on "how to" where it proposed a problem with an image and then discussed the various ways to fix it. The second kind of book is more of a reference book walking through each different tool/feature in Elements and explaining what they do - leaving it to the reader to figure out how to apply them to their particular problem.
This book is of the "how-to" variety and is really, really helpful - the best one I've seen. The best thing about it is that it has lots of real world examples of things you'd like to do to fix or improve a photo and you can literally just follow the steps in the book without really understanding the details of how Photoshop Elements really works. It does attempt to explain what's going on in Photoshop and what the steps are doing and, after awhile, you do begin to understand the concepts behind many of the tools too, but the best part is that you can immediately start doing great things to your photos, even before you've learned the tools themselves.
Of the four other books, I've purchased and read, the Photoshop Elements 2 Bible by Laurie Ulrich is the best "reference" book on how to use all the tools in Photoshop. It's a good supplement to the Elements manual.
Here's my take on the other three books I have: "The Hidden Power of Photoshop Elements 2" is full of power, but just seems too complicated to start with. In Photoshop there are always at least 20 different ways to accomplish the same thing and it just seemed that the "Hidden Power" book was always picking a pretty complicated way. I think it's got some real power teaching, but I wouldn't recommend it until you were already comfortable with a lot of the Photoshop basics including many Layer manipulations.
"Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions" is another "how-to" book, but I found that it spent too many pages on manipulations I was unlikely to do and not enough on the general purpose things you need to do to "fix and enhance" your photos.
I also have "Restoration and Retouching with Photoshop Elements 2" which is a "how-to" book that deals mostly with fixing scanned photos. If that's what you're doing, it seems well written and it's written by Laurie Ulrich how also wrote the "Photoshop Elements 2 Bible" book referred to above, but I wanted something that focused more on how to fix/enhance the typical issues in digital photos right from the camera (lighting issues, focus issues, removing unwanted elements, fixing color, making skies stand out, etc...). "Restoration and Retouching" wasn't the book for that.
So, back to the main subject here, I highly recommend "The Photoshop Elements Book for Digital Photographers". It's the best of all the ones I've read and will help you improve your photos in the first five minutes. If you're going to get two books, then I'd combine this one with a "reference" type book, particulary one that spends a lot of time on layers and blend modes.
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