The Photoshop Elements 4 Book For Digital Photographers

by Scott Kelby

A guide to Adobe Photoshop Elements covers such topics as cropping and resizing photographs, color correction, special effects, and photo restoration techniques.

Genres: Photography, Reference

439 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2005

About the author

Scott Kelby is an American author and publisher of periodicals dealing in Macintosh and Personal Computer software, specifically for design professionals, photographers, and artists.

Kelby is editor and publisher of Photoshop User and Layers magazines, president and co-founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and is president of Kelby Media Group, an Oldsmar, Florida-based software training, education, and publishing firm.
Kelby is a photographer, designer, and the award-winning author of more than 40 books.

Reviews

[Jodi]

My current photo editor (Microsoft Digital Image Pro) isn't compatible with RAW files, so I've been using Digital Photo Professional which came with my Canon SLR camera, but I feel like I'm not quite making my images "pop" with DPP. Justin is really familiar with Photoshop CS4, and most photographers tell me I should really consider using Photoshop to really get my pictures to pop. But photoshop is rather intimidating to me and I feel overwhelmed to learn a new software, especially when Photoshop CS4 has so many features that seem like overkill to me.

So everyone tells me that Scott Kelby is the best Photoshop book author, and this book is the only one of his available at the library. So I thought I'd look through it and see if it inspires me to want to buy Photoshop CS5. I know this book is only for Elements 4, but thought it still might give me a taste of Photoshop's style. If CS5 were any cheaper, I'd just dive right in. But yikes! I really need to ponder this purchase and get a little more exposure to Photoshop before I decide to take the plunge. I think the most tempting thing about Photoshop CS5 are all the actions available for it--especially for brightening eyes, and resizing and sharpening for the web. Seems like those actions would save me tons of time. Hopefully this book will help me compare some basic photoshop techniques to DPP abilities and help me make a decision.

Update: Now that I've finished browsing this book, I agree that Photoshop has some great things to offer and might not be as intimidating or overwhelming as I had thought. However, I'm more seriously considering Adobe Lightroom based on some other photographers' recommendations. Lightroom is designed more specifically for photography than CS5, and it's cheaper--so I'll have to do some more learning.

[Jimmy Autrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kelby is the master of Photoshop. He has forgotten more shortcuts than most people know. However, I'd advise that you go ahead and play a bit in Photoshop to familiarize yourself with it a bit before you delve into this book. Nothing bad, but almost as soon as you start reading the book he is Alt-Shift-Backspacing, Control-J'ing, and Press D to set your format color to black'ing. If you don't have somewhat of a feel for Photoshop you'll be lost. But...you will learn some neat, valuable, and time-saving tips from this book.

[Robb Christopherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to get into digital editing, start with Photoshop Elements. It is user-friendly and is just about as powerful as the full Photoshop for what most will need. I use it a ton for basic editing. When I don't need the full Photoshop, this is perfect. If you are going to use Elements, buy this book (there is a new edition for every new edition of Elements). It becomes my go-to book for editing.

[Jennifer]

Don't get this book unless you are prepared to put Photoshop to use. Photoshop is an expensive software to have if all you do is auto fix, correct red eyes and crop. It can do so much more and this book not only helps you do the things you are most likely interested in doing, but inspires ideas of things you didn't know you could do with photos you already have.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

super stuff.