Inside Adobe Photoshop 6

Limited Edition

Authors: Gary David Bouton, Barbara Bouton,

Gary Kubicek, Mara Zebest Nathanson

New Riders

Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

Adobe Photoshop is probably has more books written about it than any other application, certainly more than any other graphics application. The knowledge contained in these pages can take you from novice to power user if you so desire. Each and every book offers information in a different style or manner from the others, information that is only enhanced when a new version of the application is released and you purchase the next book that covers the new product. You can only gain more ideas and insights by working with one book and then progressing to another. You will also find the books geared to various levels of user experience. You will learn and grow as you use these books.  What you learn in a version 6 book will help you with version 7 because new ideas will be presented in the next version and the newer tools will be covered as well. But you will have a wealth of design ideas if you begin with this particular book.

Inside Adobe Photoshop 6 Limited Edition is for the intermediate to professional level user. It a huge 1200+ pages long, includes many color plates, and offers the reader an in depth reference and tutorial packed volume to learn more about Photoshop 6. It also includes two CD’s and a version of Alien Skin’s Eye Candy 3.1 SE.

Since most of us don’t have the time and probably the extra money that involves taking courses to learn more about applications that we use, these books provide us with the learning tools we need. We can use them at home or in group meetings, club or classroom-style situations, we will know more about Photoshop from working with this book. Approached from a studying standpoint and working chapter by chapter, we can gain a much better understanding of Photoshop than we could by just trying things on our own. Photoshop has such depth and levels that we may never discover its power without taking the time to learn from a well written book. In all likelihood, the reader will learn more from this book (or others like it) than in a beginner level classroom situation. Most of us can learn the basics fairly easily, it’s the secrets, the richness of the application, and the design idea possibilities we want to explore and understand more fully. Inside Adobe Photoshop 6 Limited Edition is an excellent book to use to teach you more about Photoshop.

The book has 31 – 31 ½ chapters and is divided into 6 parts, an index, and the above-mentioned CD’s.  I’ll give a breakdown of the first part and then brief topic coverage for the remaining parts and their chapters.

Part I (Chapters 1- 8) covers the basics. It gives the author’s version of Photoshop’s history and other insightful information. If you are not currently a Photoshop user or use an older version, version 6 is a turnaround version. I found this to be the best version I have seen. It is much more user friendly that older versions, more powerful, and I use it more than I have past versions I worked with. This chapter tells you what you need to know to get going, what Photoshop can do, and explains terminology and features. It concludes with a summary. (Each of the chapters conclude with a summary)

Chapter 2 is aptly titled “Getting Your Feet Wet: Your First Masterpiece”.  In this section, you will learn about layers and selections. You will also get a small tutorial to start off your learning experience. It covers Filters and the Free Transform, how to add something, how to work in the mode.  Then it goes on to layers in more depth and ends with a summary of this part.

Chapter 3 moves onto the Color Management System. Chapters cover understanding the new color management system. Color management is not something that is easily understood. The authors explain that this is not an easy topic and encourage the reader to take the time and have the patience to read, reread if necessary, this section and that you will understand more about it if you put the effort into learning about color management. Topics covered are Color Space and Color Gamut, Color Calibration, Working Space, Adobe Gamma, and much more. It gets you ready to create a Custom Profile, create an ICC Profile for a monitor, and Setting Color Management defaults. You are also taken through the information about the Color Settings Dialog Box, RGB and CYMK Work Spaces, Color Management Policies, and much more. It concludes with resources. If you wonder why you need to know about color management at all, then reading this chapter will give you the answers to your questions.

Chapter 4 This part deals with your preferences and optimizing the workspace. Although it’s only 30+ pages, it covers everything from where to find the dialog box to setting the general preferences. The part discusses more than 40 preference settings that you will want to learn about and set to best suit your workspace. It tells you how to work with your plug-in directory whether you want it installed in Photoshop or create a directory where you can share you plug-ins with other applications. I do this. Only a very few items have refused to install into other applications and want to see the Photoshop Plug-In folder. You can save a lot of space by linking your applications to a directory that stores your third-party plug-ins. Then it goes on to tell you to handle your system resources. If resources are not handled properly, you can run into big problems.

Chapter 5 introduces you to various image formats, modes, and color-capability. You will also get the authors recommendations for file formats and a reference of Photoshop file formats.

Chapter 6 details acquiring your Photoshop images, and Chapter 7 looks at the output of images. Chapter 8 explains how to enhance your creativity with the tools in Photoshop. It covers Actions from an introduction to managing them. It also discusses Droplets, Batch Commands, and the Preset Manager.

Part II (Chapters 9-13) is entitled “Digging Deeper into the Treasure Chest”. This section covers Selection Tools (Marquise, Lasso, Crop, Magic Wand), building image layers, painting with the Pen and Path Selection Tools, an introduction to shapes (Shape Tools, Custom Shapes, Creating your own presets), and then ends with creating special effects with type.

Part III (Chapters 14-22) “Exploring the Cool Stuff”. Part 3 gets into working with color correcting images, restoring photos, recognizing and correcting errors in pictures, using the Clone Stamp tool, image selection and distortion. It looks at creating surreal photos and details how to make them appear real, using a scanner and Photoshop, adding 3D graphics to photos, using the filters that come with Photoshop, and working with type.

Throughout these chapters are examples and how-to’s so that the reader can follow the “lessons” and try them as they are working through the book.

Part IV (Chapters 23-25) Part IV introduces Image Ready.  In this section you will learn how to prepare images for the web using Image Ready.  The chapters cover optimizing images, creating image maps, web galleries, and rollovers and animations.

Part V (Chapters 26-31) “By Popular Request”. Looking at version 6.01, upgrading to version 6.01, looking at the tools, making it work with Illustrator – creating and exporting paths; how the author’s view the application; creating 3D objects, texture tricks; how to enhance a photo; “From Clip Art to Fine Art” – making a collage, making it more attractive, the right effects, and adding other personal touches to make it perfect; spot colors, duotones, powertones; and Bouton’s (one of the authors) Awards for Plug-ins (rating plug-ins found to be the best in their categories).

Part VI (Chapter 31 ½)  This section offers closing thoughts on items included on the CD, becoming a Photoshop professional in your career, What wasn’t covered in the book, whether or not you should read other books (of course! Learn as much as you can), and where do you go from there……good advice….be happy with where you are in your career (or learning experience) and keep pursuing your dreams and goals. It’s not about achieving what you have set for yourself but what you have learned along the way. It also has some career resource links.

This is another great Photoshop learning tool. It covers very important features in detail and helps the reader to work toward developing the skills that are needed to fully enjoy and benefit from working with Photoshop. Working with this book offers us the opportunity to work at our pace own without any pressure or time restrictions. Don’t expect to do every tutorial perfectly the first time. I didn’t. It will take some time to digest all that can be learned from this book but it is certainly worth the effort. It will also prepare you to move on the next level of books with more confidence in your abilities and a much better understanding of how to use Photoshop. The creative suggestions stimulate our artistic processes and hopefully help us become more creative. This is one of my favorite  benefits from following a series of books and obtaining a wide variety of books that deal with this application….each time I get a new book, I not only get new insights into Photoshop but I also get new techniques to try! The rewards are knowledge.