Photoshop CS4 Volume 2 Visual QuickStart Guide Book Review_040110

BOOK REVIEW

Title:               Photoshop CS4 Volume 2: Visual QuickStart Guide

Author:            Elaine Weinmann & Peter Lourekas

Publisher:        Peachpit Press

ISBN:              978-0-321-63503-7

Pages:            370

Reviewer:         Talitha Hilderbrand (indymediaartists.org)

Rating:             5 of 5 Stars

At an overall glance at this book, it gives you very detailed instructions both written and visual guides on the different things you can accomplish within Photoshop CS4.  For this reason, I have been very impressed with this book.  I found the variety of subjects covered to be very extensive.  The authors took time to really make it easier for you to know what tools to use to accomplish your objective.  The authors seem to have a very high understanding of the use of this software and is going to be viewed by the consumers of this book as experts.

I used some of the techniques shown in the book.  The steps are quick and give you the end result just like the book explains.  There is not a CD included in the book, however, it does give you downloadable images on a website to work so that you can see the same end results which is a nice feature of this book.

The topics are listed in the beginning of the book but this book also has a listing at the start of each chapter of the things that are covered and the page numbers which makes it a handy additional guide.

The flow of this book was very well thought out ahead of time.  The subjects are covered in a knowledge base then expanded to techniques that use this information just covered.

Illustrations were the main reason I was drawn to this book.  As someone that uses Photoshop, you look for details which means you are more of a visual person, this book gives you really great visuals as you incorporate each step of the techniques.  These publishers cover such a variety of areas but in a very well balanced way.  I had never thought of using Photoshop to create types.  It takes quite a bit to impress me as I am a perfectionist just like the authors.  I was impressed by this book.  I learned quite a bit looking and reading over this book such as the different type of output types and how they differ.  Something that may be basic but is very important to those that work with photos.

Some of the techniques used in this book are ones that I have wanted to learn for quite a while and was very happy to find a book to teach these in an easy understandable way.

They mentioned that they are always looking to help those learning Photoshop and other subjects.  For this reason, I would gladly purchase other books by these publishers.