Almost every book I've seen is very dense and seems geared toward graphic designers. I am only interested in topics that will improve my photos. Anyone able to recommend anything?
MichaelClements
Posts: 1,660
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Check out some of the threads and articles here on MM. Angela Perez or AMP did an awesome one on frequency seperation! Don't buy books, work out your needs and go hunting on the Internet!
Scott Kelby's "The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers". There are also versions for Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, and the CS6 edition will be released on July 25. I have several versions of this book, going back to Photoshop Elements Version 2. What I like about it is that is is organized cookbook style. You look up what you want to do, and there are 2 to 4 illustrated pages giving step-by-step instructions how to do it. No need to read the entire thing. A great way to learn pro techniques for the things you need to do.
Paul Richard Wossidlo wrote: Scott Kelby's "The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers". There are also versions for Lightroom and Photoshop Elements, and the CS6 edition will be released on July 25. I have several versions of this book, going back to Photoshop Elements Version 2. What I like about it is that is is organized cookbook style. You look up what you want to do, and there are 2 to 4 illustrated pages giving step-by-step instructions how to do it. No need to read the entire thing. A great way to learn pro techniques for the things you need to do.
Also, you can download the image files from Kelby's website if you want to play along with the instruction.
Images by MR
Posts: 6,127
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
F-Stop and Light wrote: Almost every book I've seen is very dense and seems geared toward graphic designers. I am only interested in topics that will improve my photos. Anyone able to recommend anything?
Lynette Kent writes 101 tricks with PHotoshop. basically it is a step by step tutorial to do what you want, in the hit this button, get this result and so forth. easy to follow and fast to refresh. Not a lot of theory, but enough to get up up and running and being productive. Later, as the stuff is more familiar to you, get the theory books.
Jack Davis also has some excellent DVD's on it as well.
it sounds snarky, but i thought the degree that this book matched your question was funny.
I actually own the cs3 version of this book. I had a basic understanding of photoshop when I picked it up, and i read through it in a weekend, cover to cover. Came out the other side a MUCH better retoucher, just because I now had a larger number of tools in my box. I still had to practice, but it's nice to get ideas of how to approach problems.
F-Stop and Light wrote: Almost every book I've seen is very dense and seems geared toward graphic designers. I am only interested in topics that will improve my photos. Anyone able to recommend anything?
How about:
Photographic Lighting by David Brooks
Portrait photography by Mark Cleghorn
Exixting light photography Kodak Work shop Series
Photographer's Guide to using light by Schwarz Stoppee
learn to take a good picture first. Then you don't need as much post crap.
How about:
Photographic Lighting by David Brooks
Portrait photography by Mark Cleghorn
Exixting light photography Kodak Work shop Series
Photographer's Guide to using light by Schwarz Stoppee
learn to take a good picture first. Then you don't need as much post crap.
Irony. Purists are always good for a laugh.
The above mentioned book by Martin Evening is arguably the best reference guide to everything photoshop and is an excellent resource for getting familiar with all the tools photoshop has to offer.
Once you're familiar with the program, books from Scott Kelby and many of the others from NAPP are a good way to get started. Though their cookbook style of instruction is likely to get old after a while.
MichaelClements wrote: Check out some of the threads and articles here on MM. Angela Perez or AMP did an awesome one on frequency seperation! Don't buy books, work out your needs and go hunting on the Internet!
There are alot of bad tutorial videos out there by people that don't know what they're doing. If you're starting from the ground up its better to use a book to get to at least an intermediate level before looking at online videos. I'm surprised by how many "professional" retouchers I run into that don't even understand the basic unsharp mask.
Z_Photo wrote: i absolutely cannot stand reading kelby's books. i am a fan of martin evening's books
To each their own, I guess.
I'm just the opposite: I like Kelby's books as a beginning resource on a subject and how to do things while my Martin Evening CS5 book sits on the shelf that only gets pulled out as a reference. Both authors are good, I think, but Kelby's sense of humor can grate on some people.
F-Stop and Light wrote: Almost every book I've seen is very dense and seems geared toward graphic designers. I am only interested in topics that will improve my photos. Anyone able to recommend anything?
Why do you want to limit you knowledge? Want to learn just a little..Why????
WMcK
Posts: 5,191
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
F-Stop and Light wrote: Almost every book I've seen is very dense and seems geared toward graphic designers. I am only interested in topics that will improve my photos. Anyone able to recommend anything?
Martin Evening's books about Photoshop are aimed at photographers.
Why do you want to limit you knowledge? Want to learn just a little..Why????
I can understand the OPs position - there are so many complexities to Photoshop when starting out that it can be very overwhelming. I'm sure that I only use 1/1000th of it's capabilities.
I have a handful of books on Photoshop - Martin Evening's, Scott Kelby's as well as DVDs by a couple of members here. The latter have been the most helpful - maybe because the format forced me not to skim over the material (which I tend to do with books).
It would be useful to know what you are trying to accomplish in your images that you expect Photoshop to help you with - that would help the members here guide you to specific materials (and possibly other options) for achieving your vision.
| 
| 
| edu