Product Description

Inside, you'll find advanced coverage of Photoshop CS2
* Explore new ways to adjust and enhance color
* Use retouching and color adjustment techniques to correct seemingly impossible-to-fix images
* Gain control over digital camera images with Photoshop's enhanced Camera Raw capabilities
* Manage your work more efficiently with Actions, Batch processing, and the new Adobe Bridge
* Master complex filter techniques and create your own custom filter

You already know your way around Photoshop. You want to focus on creative expression, and that's what you'll find in this streamlined, lavishly illustrated volume. A Photoshop Hall of Fame inductee, a master trainer, and a Web graphics expert have collected the most important Photoshop CS2 techniques, tips, and twists to share with you-along with their enthusiasm and experience. Completely and painstakingly updated for CS2, this is truly the ultimate professional guide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #734498 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 650 pages

From the Back Cover
Inside, you'll find advanced coverage of Photoshop CS2

• Explore new ways to adjust and enhance color
• Use retouching and color adjustment techniques to correct seemingly impossible-to-fix images
• Gain control over digital camera images with Photoshop's enhanced Camera Raw capabilities
• Manage your work more efficiently with Actions, Batch processing, and the new Adobe Bridge
• Master complex filter techniques and create your own custom filter

You already know your way around Photoshop. You want to focus on creative expression, and that's what you'll find in this streamlined, lavishly illustrated volume. A Photoshop Hall of Fame inductee, a master trainer, and a Web graphics expert have collected the most important Photoshop CS2 techniques, tips, and twists to share with you—along with their enthusiasm and experience. Completely and painstakingly updated for CS2, this is truly the ultimate professional guide.

About the Author
McClelland most sinister books are the award-winning Photoshop Bible and Photoshop Bible, Professional Edition, now in their twelfth year with more copies in print than any other guides on computer graphics. Other subversive titles include Photoshop CS For Dummies, and Photoshop Elements For Dummies (both Wiley Publishing, Inc.).

Deke further shocks and appalls as host of the interactive “Video Workshop” that ships with Photoshop as well as the fiendishly exhaustive Total Training for Adobe Photoshop CS (www.totaltraining.com), the predecessor of which was named Training Product of the Year by MacNet 2.0. His other DVD- and CD-based video series include Digital Photography with Photoshop Elements and Total Training for Adobe Illustrator CS (both Total Training).

In 2002, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals voted Deke into the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Deke has also managed to become an Adobe Certified Expert, a member of the PhotoshopWorld Instructor Dream Team, a featured speaker on the 2003 Photoshop Fling cruise of the Eastern Caribbean, and a contributing editor for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines.

An artist through heredity and education, a teacher by nature, and a writer since she was old enough to pick up a crayon, Laurie Ulrich Fuller is a graphic artist, computer trainer, and the author and co-author of more than 25 books on computers, software, and the Web. Laurie has written hundreds of training manuals for universities and corporate training centers, and in the past 15 years, she’s personally trained thousands of people to make more creative and effective use of their computers.

Her classroom has recently expanded to include total strangers she’ll never lay eyes on—through CD-based training products available from both Total Training and VTC.
In the early 1990’s, after spending way too many years working for other people, Laurie started her own firm, Limehat & Company, Inc. This venture allowed her to put her experience, ideas, and contacts to good use, providing consulting, training, Web design, and Web hosting services with a focus on the special needs of growing companies and non-profit organizations. If you’re wondering where the name “Limehat” came from, it’s a long story, but suffice to say it goes back to a childhood taunt heard on the school bus, regarding a plaid hat that Laurie’s mother thought looked cute, but that nearly turned the then 6-year-old Laurie into a social pariah. When not writing about or teaching people to use computers, Laurie can be found supporting a variety of animal advocacy groups—through protests, writing educational articles, and maintaining her other organization’s Web site, freedomforanimals.org. She also enjoys her family, gardening, antiques, old houses (she and her husband are about to begin renovating one of their own), and adding to her collections of books, movies, and Wallace Nutting artwork.
You can find out more about Laurie’s work, experiences, and both personal and professional interests at www.planetlaurie.com, and she welcomes your e-mail at authors@photoshopbible.com.

Mr. Fuller typically shuns the bright light of day, lurking instead in the cold dark basements or shallow pools beneath convenience store dumpsters known to be the common environs of the wretched PC user. His rare appearance here can only be attributed to his fascination with shiny objects. The Macintosh, which appeared on the family’s kitchen counter just after Christmas, lured him onto the upper floors of his quiet domicile gawking in wonder. “Hmmm...likie-likie,” he was heard to snivel as he licked the slick, translucent mouse.
Having enveloped him in the “warm fuzzies,” the likes of which he hasn’t felt since his NeXT Dimension Turbo Cube was mothballed, no one’s been able to pull him away from this fabulous eMac since.
His family, believing the long hours he’s spent with the new toy may have a rejuvenating effect on his psyche, thought that seeing his work in print might hasten his return into polite society. At the very least, it’s stopped him from shuffling about the basement, threatening faceless apparitions, and shaking his monitor violently—grumbling something about fleeing to Cupertino, California.
Robert is the author of the Dreamweaver 4 and HTML Virtual Classrooms (McGraw-Hill/Osborne), HTML in 10 Steps or Less (Wiley Publishing, Inc.), and has contributed to The Photoshop 7 Complete Reference, (McGraw-Hill/Osborne), The Photoshop Elements 2 Bible, and Restoration and Retouching with Photoshop Elements 2 (both Wiley Publishing, Inc.), as well as this lovely tome you’re reading now.

Customer Reviews

Split Personality
Photoshop software leads a double life, appealing both to photographers who use it as a digital replacement for the old chemical darkroom, and graphic artists, who use its many tools to create sophisticated art work. That dichotomy is emphasized in the contents of this book.

It's important to understand that "Photoshop CS2 Bible, Professional Edition" is not the same book as "Photoshop CS2 Bible". And it's not just the hard cover. This is a somewhat shorter book, with more color graphics and aimed at more experienced users of Photoshop than "Photoshop CS2 Bible", with emphasis on advanced techniques.

The book is divided into chapters, each of which covers a group of related tools and functions, like painting and brushes; blend modes and knockouts; and pixelate, distort and render. Each of the chapters goes into these functions in great detail, telling you how to use the function. For example, in the chapter on shapes and styles, one section is devoted to the 8 steps of creating a new shape layer. These explanations are accompanied by excellent color illustrations that show you the procedure. The explanations themselves are clear and concise. I had no trouble learning about the use of functions that I had never used before.

The book appears to be aimed at the graphic artist rather than the photographer. Even the design of the book itself, with lots of colorful illustrations, excellent typography and high-quality paper, seems to be aimed at graphic artists. For example, the chapter on brushes spends time explaining the scattering option, which spreads the positions of spots of color around brush strokes. I can't begin to picture when a photographer might apply such a sophisticated technique. This level of explanation is found throughout the book. On the other hand the book will not lead you through an entire process from creating a new image to saving it for printing. Often it does not give a practical example of how a particular tool might be used. It will be up to the graphic artist to figure that out. This is not the book for someone to learn how to use Photoshop.

Moreover, I found that what the authors consider advanced techniques was rather idiosyncratic. For example, there is no discussion at all of the extraction tool, which the authors say is covered in the basic edition. On the other hand, the discussion of quick mask seemed to me to be quite elementary. The chapter on web graphics discussed the creation of animations but not rollovers. The chapter on Adobe Camera Raw had a simplistic discussion of the use of the raw converter. And there was not even a mention of Adobe Bridge's ability to be used to import images from cameras.

Even though this book is well written and provides a great deal of information on some of the tools and processes hidden in Photoshop, it will probably appeal to a limited audience. That audience will consist of graphic artists who have the time to look through a lengthy but precise book, gleaning tips that they probably would not find somewhere else.

Photoshop CS2 Bible - Professional Edition Book Review

Title: Photoshop CS2 Bible - Professional Edition
Author: Laurie Ulrich Fuller, Robert C. Fuller, and Deke McClelland
Publisher: Wiley Publishing, Inc. 2004
ISBN: 0-7645-4179-X
Pages: 649 pages
Reviewer: Bruce Frank
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Deke McClelland is quite possibly the most accessible and humorous Photoshop guru around, rivaled only by Scott Kelby and Russell Brown. In the introduction to this book, he asserts that he was born in Verona in 1511, and later, with diabolical intent, developed a pathogen code named the "Pernicious Instrument of eXtreme Evil" (you guessed it, "pixel" for short). Then, in the words of the introduction, "When his invention turned out to help rather than hurt photography, he went quite mad. He now inflicts his revenge by writing educational books and hosting training videos."

Although written with his characteristic wit, McClelland always returns to the point, very carefully and thoroughly explaining the precise steps needed to achieve various results in Photoshop, so that even a beginner will be able to follow along easily. Having said that, this book is true to its "Professional Edition" designation - it covers very advanced techniques. For example, one very interesting bit of information I picked up is that Layer Styles (automated effects provided in the Layer Styles palette) can be "deconstructed" - that is, by choosing Layer > Layer Style > Create Layers, you can take over and edit each layer of the effect to your satisfaction.

Attention to detail is one of the hallmarks of this book - in the chapter called "Painting and Brushes," McClelland even covers the hardware a Photoshop artist would probably use (the Wacom tablet), and elaborates on the techniques it can facilitate.

Well written and designed, and with color photos and screenshots throughout, this is a tome (649 pages!) that should serve as a useful reference for years to come. Although this is written to cover Photoshop CS, nearly all of the techniques covered would apply to Photoshop CS2 as well. Supplemental information can be found at dekemc.com.

Great photos and graphics, sage advice.
The features you need, the advice you want, the examples you'll refer to again and again: that's what you'll find in this book. The experience and insights that the authors bring to this book have made it one of my favorites among computer books in general and my total favorite among Photoshop books. I recommend this edition of the Bible to anyone who has already used most of the basic features and wants some expert advice to move them on to the next level. The "Professional" tag is appropriate, but you don't need to be an expert to use the book: that's where it takes you. Don't expect this book to baby you and for every single button and dialog box to be covered, because this is a book focused on the features you use for more advanced projects, and the work that pushes the edge of the design envelope. If you're looking for coverage of everything in the Photoshop menus and tools, get the main CS2 Bible, the one that's like 1500 pages. If you want to learn specific stuff to take your work to the next level, the Professional Edition is the one you want.