Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3 is part of the O'Reilly Dynamic Learning series, a comprehensive, integrated learning environment that combines books with video tutorials and online resources. Written and produced by product experts and trainers who have produced many of Adobe's training titles, the book, along with the Digital Classroom video tutorials on the DVD, takes you step-by-step through the process of learning to use Photoshop CS3 like a pro on your Mac or PC.
This full-color book is organized into lessons, with easy-to-follow instructions, tips, examples, self-study exercises, and review questions at the end of every lesson. Each lesson is self-contained, so you can go through the entire book sequentially or just focus on individual lessons.
Topics covered include:
What's new in Photoshop CS3
Bridge
Camera Raw
Making Selections
Painting and Retouching
Layers, Smart Objects, and Smart Filters
Creating graphics for video and the Web
The companion DVD included with the book includes video tutorials and all of the lesson files, with starting images, additional elements, and the final, completed image files. A free Instructor's Guide is available online in PDF format.
Jennifer Smith, co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Aquent Graphics Institute www.agitraining.com, a subsidiary of Aquent www.aquent.com, has been working in electronic publishing for over two decades, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost authorities in electronic publishing and design. She has authored a number of books on print and Internet publishing, including the Adobe Creative Suite for Dummies (CS and CS2), Adobe Illustrator Classroom in a Book (CS and CS2), GoLive CS2 Classroom in a Book, and Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe GoLive in 24 Hours. Most recently, she has helped author much of Adobe's internal training for the Creative Suite 3 launch. For more information on AGI, please visit www.agitraining.com.
The AGI Creative Team is a highly experienced group of authors and instructors with a strong track record for developing and delivering best-of-breed books, video content, seminar series, and conferences.
Comments about oreilly Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3:
When you are trying to learn a program it helps to do it with short projects that give you the feeling you have accomplished a lot, and this book does just that.
Even on the first few lessons you get a very good sense of accomplishment and explanations as to why you should do this or that in this particular fashion. Photoshop itself offers several different ways to accomplish tasks, and I felt that the majority of the tasks performed during the exercises were an optimized way to performed them.
The language was very easy to follow and having a video to guide you for part of the lesson was very helpful.
12/4/2007
(3 of 3 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Dynamic Learning : Photoshop CS3
By Lee Donehower
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3:
Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3
by Lee Donehower, Board Member
Diablo Valley Mac Users Group
It's an age-old problem with software textbooks: the authors are so married to their projects that they simply can't fathom how different folks could read their written words and come away with an interpretation completely foreign to what the author was trying to communicate.
Kudos to Jennifer Smith and the AGI Creative Team for restoring my faith in the textbook-creation industry! Dynamic Learning Photoshop CS3 is well thought out, presented, and apparently tested prior to publication. And, just in case they missed something, opposite the Contents page, in the book's printing history, is this statement: "Please report any errors by sending a message to errata@aquent.com."
Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3 is a great tool whether you're new to Photoshop or, like me, have been using the software since Version 1 was released. Photoshop is one of those software programs that is so robust that I doubt any one person could ever master every nook and cranny of its potential. Jennifer's treatment of exploring CS3, the workspace, and the basics, though familiar to me, still offered new tricks.
Moving on to the meat and potatoes of Photoshop, Jennifer was able to unravel the mystery of setting white and black points in an image in such a clear manner that I finally feel comfortable using them as my primary retouching tools.
Her chapter on using smart objects in Photoshop also expanded my understanding of nondestructive editing, and I could easily see where this new Photoshop tool would have come in handy for past projects.
I did come across some errors in the book and took advantage of the errata email address to report them. Voila! Jennifer herself wrote back and promised to make the necessary changes in the next printing of the book.
Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3 is easy to read, easy to follow, and despite its penchant for clarity, does not leave you feeling like the village idiot. Only its last chapter, Creating Images for Web and Video, left me disappointed. Admittedly, this is a very complex topic, but after completing the tutorials I was left wondering where and how to transpose my newfound knowledge into my own projects.
The book comes with a DVD containing flash videos of each chapter as well as lesson files for working the tutorials. Overall, the book is excellent, and I look forward to reading others in the Dynamic Learning series. A tad expensive, but in this case you DO get what you pay for!
8/13/2007
4.0
Dynamic Learning Photoshop CS3
By Ed Laskowski
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Dynamic Learning: Photoshop CS3:
Dynamic Learning-Photoshop CS3
This new book teaches the workings of the new Photoshop CS3, released on 16 April 2007. The book consists of 13 Lessons (chapters) and an index, in 349 pages. The first lesson describes the new features of Photoshop CS3, of which there are quite a few. Further lessons teach the use of Selections, Layers, Painting and Retouching, Filters, Smart Objects, and creating images for the Web, video, and print. The book is printed on glossy paper with illustrations and screen captures in color throughout. There are useful tables, such as the one describing all the tools, another on understanding file formats. Lesson 8 has a good Color Primer section which describes the RGB and CMYK color spaces.
The DVD which comes with the book has all the images used the lessons, plus 13 tutorial videos
(about five minutes each) corresponding to each of the lessons in the text. This book provides a well-rounded working knowledge of the Photoshop CS3 program, for the beginner.
