Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop Elements 12 Author: Mike Wooldridge | Language: English | ISBN:
1118729218 | Format: PDF
Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop Elements 12 Description
Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer instructions that show you how to do something — and skip the long-winded explanations? If so, then this book is for you. Open it up and you'll find clear, step-by-step screen shots that show you how to tackle more than 160 Photoshop Elements tasks. Each task-based spread covers a single technique, sure to help you get up and running on Photoshop Elements 12 in no time.
You'll learn to:
- Use both the Organizer and Editor
- Import photos from various sources
- Enhance lighting and color
- Restore old photos and add effects
- Save, back up, and share photos
Designed for visual learners
- Two-page lessons break big topics into bite-sized modules
- Succinct explanations walk you through step by step
- Full-color screen shots demonstrate each task
- Helpful sidebars offer practical tips and tricks
- Paperback: 384 pages
- Publisher: Visual; 1 edition (October 21, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1118729218
- ISBN-13: 978-1118729212
- Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
I have both Photoshop Elements 12 "the Missing Manual" and Photoshop Elements 12 "Learn Visually". Both are handsomely printed in full color on shiny paper but a picture is worth a thousand words applies to the two volumes as "Missing" consists of 618 pages, "Visually" of 371. "Missing" retails for $28.20, "Visually" for $16.79. I can't recommend one volume over the other in efficacy of teaching you the mechanics of a complicated art form but "Visually" perhaps has the edge in getting you started as the the first pages are devoted to introducing you to the tools and their uses with screenshots of the whole Elements workspace including the top and bottom right and left areas. You have to study the diagrams very closely but you will learn the identity of each tool by mousing it over and when you click on it the parameters and manipulations of that particular tool appear in the lower task area. Color, thickness, aliasing and other methods of adjusting what the tool will do are right at your fingertips. Elements crams something useful into every possible space on and around you canvas and it's up to you to ferret them out. The tools can be just plain fun: with the sponge tool saturate or desaturate an area. The Smart Brush lets you turn a grey sky to blue and the exact shade of blue is your decision. Want to turn a pallid rose into a luscious red? Piece of cake!
The visual approach (but there is still a lot to read) came to my rescue in "refining the edge of a selection." I work a lot in digital collage, putting a zebra, say, in the middle of Fifth Avenue. In isolating the zebra by removing him from whatever background he is on -using the eraser tool- results in an edge, a whitish area around the image, as the eraser tool cannot cut it absolutely cleanly.
I have been using Photoshop Elements for years. It is a powerful program, probably the best in existence for dealing with photos. I am familiar with a number of functions within the program, the ones I use for what I need. So this book will come in handy for helping me to understand how functions I am unfamiliar with work.
This is an ambitious learning manual, and its way of going about detailing needed steps to get a task done is a good one. It seeks to cover just about everything in its 371 pages (including index). But in my opinion it is, even at its considerable length, too short. Let me detail what I mean:
(1) There are reams of screenshots--that's good--but they are hard to read and figure out easily since they are small. I have resorted to my large magnifying glass to make out what the icon looks like. It does help to have the program up and running and to go through the steps by working on a photo or a few photos since you can see the icons be menus more easily.
(2) At the beginning of this book, you can read this: "Who is the Book For...This book is for the reader who has never used this particular tecnology or software application." I beg to differ with that statement. Someone who has never used a photo editing program would have a tough time--even with the commendably detailed steps--figuring out how to use the various funtions, without patient and careful study.
(3) Also, the instructions are terse, and there are a lot of cross references. Granted the book would have been much longer if the authors had kept repeating the same instructions over and over, but if you use this book, in a lot of places you will find yourself flipping back and forth constantly to read or reread previous procedures in order to figure out what to do.
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