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Book Review: The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers

By Scott Kelby. The Photoshop CS Book for digital photographers is a great book. As a long-time user of Photoshop, I wasn’t sure if there would be a whole lot of new material here, but I was happy to find the book is replete with techniques and tips that I would have never come up with on my own, as well as better ways of doing things that I had already been doing the “hard way.”

Among the chapters I found useful were the chapters on color correction; which go into great detail on how to use and understand curves, including providing default settings that will get you started on the right foot. Towards the end of the book there are some great techniques on helping your photographs have that “stock photography look” — depth of field effects, layer masking for collages and replicating photography filters.

The writing style is enjoyable, the steps are clearly laid out with screenshots and the full-color, intuitive layout of the book leaves little to be desired.

Not only will this book help you improve your Photoshop skills, it will help you have a better eye for what can be improved in your photographs. I often found that the techniques to correct photos were things I had never considered, not because they were difficult or obscure but, simply because I hadn?t noticed that my photos had the problems in the first place.

One thing to note is that if you own the previous version of this book, The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, the majority of the content is the same. There is a new section on the improved file browser and a few other new pieces, but it’s not really worth it to get a new copy since a large portion of it is the same.