Photoshop Elements 11 For Dummies
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Photoshop Elements 11 For Dummies Details
From the Back Cover Bring out the best in your photos with Photoshop Elements. This book makes it easy! Photoshop Elements puts powerful yet simple-to-use tools in the hands of every shutterbug. This handy guide shows you how to make the most of Photoshop Elements to organize your images, fix common problems, control color, add text, create slide shows, and much more. Elements-ary, my dear Watson — get familiar with the tools, menus, and options, import your images, and explore the Organizer Under the hood — understand resolutions, color modes, and file formats, and add tags and albums so you can find your photos fast The beauty within — tweak entire photos or the teeniest detail, remove red-eye, crop photos for better composition, correct contrast and color, and fix flaws Express your vision — turn a photo image into a drawing or apply many other effects, experiment with type, or play with the drawing and painting tools Share the moment — create professional looking prints, share your creations over the web and social networks, or view them on your TV Open the book and find: How to import and organize your images Instructions for both Windows and Mac users How to wave the Magic Wand and toss the Lasso Techniques for correcting color, contrast, and clarity Tips for composing and cropping photos Creative and practical projects anyone can do Secrets for quickly sharing photos on your favorite social networks How to upload and save images to Photoshop Showcase Learn to: Fix the most common digital photo problems Edit and crop images, enhance color, and sharpen photos Share your photos with family and friends on Facebook® and Flickr® IN FULL COLOR! Read more About the Author Barbara Obermeier is principal of Obermeier Design, a graphic design studio in California. She is currently a faculty member in the School of Graphic Design at Brooks Institute. Ted Padova is an internationally recognized authority on Adobe Acrobat, PDF, and digital imaging. Read more
Reviews
Virtually everyone who has struggled thru Adobe's software will admit that the learning curve is rather steep. To many, it is frustrating to the point of causing them to move to other, easier to use software like Capture NX2 or Paintshop Pro. Others find that it's myriad of features and multiple methods of accessing them is simply overwhelming and give up in despair. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographers, make a living demystifying Photoshop by running courses and workshops to help you use the powerful but confusing features of the program.Now, however, you have a friend in the game. the "DUMMIES" book will help you survive the photoshop experience with a minimum of wounds and much less tearing of hair, weeping and gnashing of teeth (note: it will not reduce those things to zero).Photoshop Elements 11 editor is a little less worse than previous versions in that it offers quick, guided and expert interfaces right from the get-go. If this is your first intro to the program, by all means, use the quick system and do not let a testosterone fog persuade you to take on the expert interface. You will have to get to page 31 in "DUMMIES" and read the note at the bottom of the page for an intro to this."DUMMIES" then takes you thru an explanation of all the tabs, buttons, and options. READ THIS SLOWLY and commit it to memory. Follow the step by step progression in the book. This is what will save you the 'tears' part mentioned above. Page 38 will move you thru the menu bar. This is invaluable since Adobe seems to take pride in making its menus confusing and non-intuitive. Using "DUMMIES" will save you time and make your job of editing easier.Chapter 3 ends with a discussion of adjusting your monitor to look like your photo prints. Here's a tip that's NOT in the book: Photo prints are viewed with reflected light; monitors use back lighting which is much brighter than reflected light. If you want your monitor to give you a good idea of what your print will look like, you must DECREASE THE BRIGHTNESS quite a lot - to about 25% of what you initially think it should be. Experiment with this and you'll be a lot happier with your printed pictures in the end.Chapter 8 of DUMMIES talks about layers. Layers are a great strength of Elements and, at the same time, one of the most difficult for some beginners to master. Some programs, like Capture NX2, automate the use of layers and make it so intuitive that you never even realize you are using them. Adobe is not so friendly but DUMMIES will get you thru it and help a great deal.Overall, DUMMIES does an excellent job of explaining Elements and is the best book of its type that I have seen. It takes you step by step and is very thorough and well organized with a good index and table of contents.I downgraded it one star because it doesn't include information on PLUG-INs like those amazing augmentations by NIK Software. Be sure to look into these fabulous programs whether you are an Elements novice or expert. You can download them for free and try them before buying.
