| Photoshop 7 Savvy by Steve Romaniello Softcover - 688 pages (2002) SYBEX Inc. Publishers; San Francisco and London, ISBN: 0782141102 book review by Rolando Gomez |
 The author goes to great pains to eliminate "computerese" while concentrating efforts into friendlier terms, and provides a comprehensive glossary for areas where related vocabulary must be used to thoroughly explain the concepts. Photoshop 7 Savvy's key topics focused on core Photoshop skills, new Photoshop 7 features, image retouching, color management and correction, Photoshop, ImageReady, and the web, and advanced techniques. These topics are found throughout the book's four main parts, Photoshop core, Photoshop color, Photoshop savvy, and Photoshop with the world wide web and digital video. The Photoshop core part provides a historical perspective while eloquently presenting the "artistic foundations and technical innovations" that made Photoshop what it is today. It's the largest section of the book focusing on the "nuts and bolts" of Photoshop while thoroughly explaining digital imaging fundamentals to provide an "insight" on the Photoshop operations and structure. Once you've gained a grasp of part one, you'll be deadly in Photoshop--ready to apply your new, "hands-on" knowledge. In the Photoshop color part, you'll discover techniques for managing and manipulating color. Color management, which Photoshop 6.0 revolutionized, is thoroughly explained in this part, and if you apply what you'll learn in this section, you'll be able to "manage color from throughout the entire imaging process to assure predictable results." In other words, what you see on your monitor will match what you print on paper. You will also learn creative color-mapping and color corrections as well as image enhancing methods and photo retouching techniques. Part three, titled Photoshop Savvy, is just that--it's an area designed to allow you to "flex your muscles." This is where you'll use what you've learned so far to better understand featured advanced techniques to retouch photos, manage layers, make complex selections, apply creative enhancement filters, superimpose images, and total automation of Photoshop. Finally, part four features something not normally found in most Photoshop books, digital video as well as the Internet. Here web design techniques with Photoshop are explored and Adobe ImageReady is thoroughly covered (two books for the price of one). Digital video and the integration of Photoshop with Adobe's nonlinear video editing software, Premiere is also explored. Between all these parts, you'll find invaluable hands-on, comprehensive tutorials designed to fit appropriately throughout the book--this alone is well worth the price of the book and the tutorials are multi-platform. The book also provides great reference appendices as well as a comprehensive glossary. Romaniello's experience in software training and consulting (he's the CEO of GlobalEye Systems), and his previous work, Mastering Photoshop 6, are evident as this book is written for the reader to easily understand while ensuring core competencies of Photoshop are clearly explained and understood. I highly recommend this book to anyone who uses any version of Photoshop, older or future versions, this book is well worth its value and the time you'll save while using Photoshop after reading this book is a great return on any investment. To add this book to your must read list, click here: If you would like your book reviewed and placed on Garage Glamour™ contact Rolando at rolando@garageglamour.com |
