[.ca] Photoshop 6 wow!book (+CD) peachpit press (ISBN 2744080152)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Whether you're a Photoshop pro or a demanding amateur, The Photoshop 6 Wow! Book contains the widest selection of useful projects, tips, tutorials, techniques and examples of professionally produced work you're likely to find in one place. What's remarkable about this book is that every page contains something worth knowing. While other Photoshop books have their strengths, be it web production, photographic retouching and repro-techniques or illustration, The Photoshop 6 Wow! Book provides in-depth knowledge on just about every aspect of Photoshop 6. Tutorials covering techniques you might already be familiar with often provide better ways of doing things or additional related information. Where they cover new ground the results are so stunning you'll want to try them out and add them to your repertoire. As well as the staples--framing with masks, fixing problem photos, quick masking and blending, filters and so on--you'll find gems such as focusing attention with colour, blurring backgrounds while retaining grain, hand tinting black and white photos, applying images to textured surfaces and painting with the art-history brush. The book focuses strongly on new Photoshop 6 features such as layer styles, vector shapes and fill layers as well as improved text handling. This makes it ideal for getting up to speed on the new features and interface enhancements in Photoshop 6, but anyone using older versions would do better with The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book or The Photoshop 4 Wow! Book by the same authors. Screen shots, before and after examples and galleries of professionally produced work in full colour throughout make this an easy book to dip into as well as a good basis for a structured course. --Ken McMahon

Not for real art photographers:
I bought this book based on the reviews I read and I have to admit its not what I expected. Isn't there a book out there for non-commercial photographers? Does every photoshop user have clients and need to make a buck? Where is the voice of the true art photographers. This book is full of glitz and tricks for making photos that look like they belong in magazine ads and as posters on a teen-ager's wall. If that's the type of art you are looking for then this is the book for you.

Marvel of Art is Inspiring:
There are many examples within this book that are just amazing, and this book will introduce you to ways to recreate such beautiful effects. In the process, you'll learn to unlock the power of PhotoShop. Be warned though, this is not a book that will hand hold you and walk you through "What is a pencil tool" and "how to use it". If you know PhotoShop a little, or an intuitive knack to figure things out, then you can learn a lot from this book. I found at least one of the guides not to work correctly across platforms (Mac OS vs. Windows), but fortunately with the CD, there were some styles that I can plug in and use immediately. I was able to add some spice to my dull web pages. So in summary, this is not a general purpose tutorial. It will show you some spot techniques and tricks that give you inspiration and bring some techniques of the trade into your mental palette as well as increase your PhotoShop knowledge.

Lots of fun:
This is a virtual candy store for a Photoshop enthusiast, and one of my two favorite Photoshop books. The effects are fun and occassionally challenging. If you work through a decent portion of this book you will learn the program. Since most of the examples will work just fine in Photoshop 7, I probably will skip the next edition unless it has a lot of new material. If you know the basics of Photoshop and want to go to the next level this is a good place to start.

Great for fun:
Ever read those "how to" books and get bored? This isn't one of them. A photoshop book should be in COLOR and this one is. It's very easy to follow (I'm not and expert). It's not in any order so if you feel like learning about cropping an image just flip to the page. Great reference for personal web site people.

DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK:
Just goes to show that just because these bozos can use Photoshop it doesn't mean they can explain what they are doing. One of the worst, most over rated CONFUSING Photoshops books EVER!!! The number of glowing reviews about this makes one consider how objective these people are.