Photoshop CS – Down & Dirty Tricks
Scott Kelby
New Riders: Voices That Matter
ISBN# 0-7357-1353-7
$60.99 CAN, £30.99 Net UK and $39.99 USA
User Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Are you a Photoshop fan? How about a Scott Kelby fan? Well if you are both or either, you will likely be pleased with this latest edition to the Photoshop books that are on the market. This latest addition to the Photoshop books line up is the third edition of a series that Scott Kelby published through NAPP Publishing Inc. – back in 2000.
This latest edition to the Down & Dirty Tricks is entitled “Photoshop CS Down & Dirty Tricks”. The book reports on page xiii “100% all cool new stuff!”, while this might be the case for some users, its is far from the case with long time Photoshop users. Yes it is new to the Down & Dirty Tricks series, but that’s as far as the claim goes, in my opinion. While it does give some interesting ideas, and how to do them, most are not likely new to any person who has been working with Photoshop for the past 4 to 6 years. But none the less, the tutorials are interesting and the tips/tricks offered give good insight into helping with your work, or at least gives you an idea of why something does what it does for no apparent reason.
I would say that about 80% of the tutorials will work as far back as version 6. A few even work in version 4 with lots of work arounds’. In general even with work arounds are not much different. I am puzzled over the User Level that the book is marketed with, that of Intermediate to Advance. As I do not know the publishers definition of Intermediate or Advance it is hard to say, to me the tutorials are not advanced, but Basic to Intermediate. Yes, if you read the inside of the book Kelby does state that his goal was to aim the book at basic through to advanced users, which I guess is the case if you take a close look. Zipping through the book and grabbing a tutorial at random etc, it feels all basic with a few intermediate ones thrown in for good measure.
Oh the whole, this is a good edition to the Photoshop series of books that are currently on the market. Some of the ideas though not new, are still interesting and great for reference especially when you are trying to remember or figure out what you’ve been doing in past version of Photoshop, but are not familiar with the latest version.
If you are looking to update your Photoshop book library, this is a good book to put on your list of books to get. You can also get glimpses of the book through the publication Photoshop User Magazine and through Scott Kelby’s site at http://www.scottkelbybooks.com
Rating: 4 out of 5 Mac’s
Reviewed by: Nyx Wolfwalker
First Published On: October 25th, 2003