My Go-To-Book for Adobe Photoshop

Oh, I wish I would have had this book or its predecessor five years or so ago when I was trying to learn about color management from setting up preferences in Photoshop through printing. I had the hardest time trying to figure out all the ins and outs. I downloaded tutorials from the internet. I sat with the Photoshop books I had at the time and read, re-read and highlighted passages. And still I was left with nagging questions. Do I uncheck this or check that. Should the workspace be ProPhoto or RGB 1998? Did I want to be reminded when the profile was different than the workspace. How did I make the Photoshop printing dialog agree with the printer dialog? Now all these things seem simple but at the time I couldn't find one single source of information that took me from beginning to end in a way that I could follow and not get lost in the theory or that didn't leave me wondering if this was the right screen where I was suppose to see a certain check box.

Color management was only one of the areas where I was having problems in mastering Photoshop and printing. I still haven't mastered Photoshop but I'm a lot further down the road now than I was then.

Several people told me about Scott Kelby's book on CS2 so finally I added it to my 3 or 4 other books on CS2. I think after I bought that book I never opened another one of my other Photoshop books again.

I waited impatiently for The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers to come out. Oh, by this time I knew enough about Photoshop that I was able to use CS3 after I downloaded it right after it was released. I played with some new sliders in Bridge and CS3 to figure out what they did but I still wanted Kelby's book on CS3. Besides I gave my CS2 book to someone because they were trying to learn Photoshop and of course right after that I had something come up where I wished I had my favorite Photoshop reference book back. And you know what, I was resentful that the person I gave the book to was immediately able to set up her copy of Photoshop for color managing her images right through to the final print! I wanted her to struggle like I had struggled so that she would really appreciate that color managed print!

I've had my copy of Kelby's book on CS3 for a couple of weeks and it makes how to do things simple, even gives you some hints on when to not use a technique. He kept the book to a comfortable reference size by putting some information in bonus chapters on his website.

If you want to learn Photoshop CS3 take the easy way, buy The Adobe Photoshop CS3 book for digital photographers by Scott Kelby.