Learn PS CS2

[khatley]

Looking for where to best spend my money on how to learn photoshop. There are a ton of books and workshops but I am looking for the single best way to learn as much as I can. I would love to do live instruction so my questions can be answered but if there is a book or two that you guys feel can teach me more than the other please share. I want to make sure whatever I get is geared toward the digital photographer as well as I know many of the books are for web design.

[AjP]

Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers

[RandySmith]

khatley -

One of the resources where I've learned a lot and continue to learn from is the NAPP website: www.photoshopuser.com ..... they offer live seminars from time to time, and have a lot of instructional materials geared towards photographers, or graphic artists, and they have a user forum similar to TPF as well where you can get some help if needed.

I hope you have a better memory than me, because there is so much to learn, and I'm amazed that I can't even remember what I've forgotten !!

best of luck.
Randy

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by khatley

Looking for where to best spend my money on how to learn photoshop. There are a ton of books and workshops but I am looking for the single best way to learn as much as I can. I would love to do live instruction so my questions can be answered but if there is a book or two that you guys feel can teach me more than the other please share. I want to make sure whatever I get is geared toward the digital photographer as well as I know many of the books are for web design.

The two best Photoshop books I've found:

Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One (One-On-One) (Paperback)
by Deke McClelland. It come with a cd of dvd lectures and self paced tutorials. I wish I had started CS2 with rather than Adobe's Classroom in book.

The second is full of quick "How do I do this" sections.

The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) (Paperback)
by Scott Kelby

And if to work with raw you must have this:

Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS2 (Real World) (Paperback)
by Bruce Fraser

And for when you realize the need for serious color mangement:

Real World Color Management, Second Edition (Paperback)
by Bruce Fraser, Chris Murphy, Fred Bunting

[khatley]

thanks everyone, I already ordered the Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers. I have already read Real World Camera Raw and Scott Kelby's CS version. I work with computers for a living so technical is what I want. I want to learn what, when, why and how and I thought the Kelby book would be good to go back to but really want to learn what everything does not just step by step this is how you do something. I found that to be a pretty boring read but am sure I will go back to it once I actually learn the software. I chose the one I did based on the number of pages it has! Hopefully it is more in depth than the later recommendations.

[Gordon]

I found 'photoshop masterclass' by John Paul Caponigro to be one of the best photoshop 'why' books I've read. There are plenty that explain the how and what each button does but I don't find that very useful or interesting (I've got a technical background in image processing though)

The Caponigro book is the only one I've found so far (and welcome to hear about others) that actually discusses what you might be trying to achieve with the changes.

I have a harder time working out what I might envision doing than working out how to do it, and the 'photoshop masterclass' book helped me a lot there.

It does waffle on in a new agey way that I found quite annoying and the second half is mostly devoted to creating atmospheric effects totally in photoshop, but I found the first half of the book really valuable.

Certainly much more useful than anything by Kelby that I've read, who seems to be a master of glossing over the point and technical details (which can be good or bad depending on your perspective) I've found his books far too fluffy and lacking in content to be useful though.

The Bruce Fraser colour management books are useful, particularly if you are interested in prepress work. There are better books on colour management for inkjet printing though, or so I've heard.

The RAW book is very expensive for the little content that it has. Most of the information is available on Adobe's web site or in the help files. I wasn't impressed at all.