ePub 55 Days (NHB Modern Plays) by Howard Brenton in Arts-Photography

Review

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful. Very informative; well writtenBy Megan MI recently upgraded from PSE7 to CS5 and was a bit overwhelmed with all the new tools and options now available to me. Martin Evenings CS5 book is fabulous! It does assume some prior PS knowledge; so I wouldnt recommend this book to someone completely new to PS; but it is very informative and full of practical tips for someone relatively familiar with Photoshop. I had a question about one of the techniques in the Image Retouching chapter and emailed the author. I received a prompt reply in less than 24 hours from Mr. Evening clarifying his description in the book and pointing me to some other resources. I have many pages earmarked already and will continue to use this as a reference whenever using CS5. Highly recommended!104 of 108 people found the following review helpful. A Photographers guide to Photoshop CS5By BostonAaronThis is arguably better than the missing manual to Photoshop CS5. The author has a clear writing style and the illustrations are first rate so that you can actually see the modifications he is discussing. This book also includes a DVD with movies showing some of the new features of CS5 including content aware fill and puppet warp. There is a significant discussion of using raw to preprocess pictures even if they were not captured in RAW format. He even covers color management in considerable detail; well beyond the usual display profiling and calibration.Of course every book can be improved and even though I gave this book the maximum number of stars I believe that there are short comings that some other authors can and will address. For example; the index seemed a little hard for me to use; at least at first; and I wished that the entire book; rather than selected chapters was on the DVD so I could search for what I wanted. Nevertheless the DVD does include a help guide that complements the book and provides some desktop assistance. Also; even though the book contains numerous specific examples of photographic modifications and repairs and the DVD contains the original photographs when possible for your practice; I think that there are other Photoshop books that provide more fully illustrated examples with the steps more clearly outlined. I also have the Scott Kelby Photoshop CS4 book for digital photographers as well as the CS3 book and these guides teach by example; with the books organized as a series of photographic fixes. As I am writing this review; however; the CS5 book is not yet available and Ive been temporarily saved from having to read through Mr Kelbys humor to get to the good parts.So to sum up. Martin Evening has created a tour deforce explaining the features you need to run Photoshop CS5 that is better illustrated than the Adobe Photoshop CS5 users guide available on the Adobe web site! (see its not really missing and you can Google photoshop CS5 user guide to find it like I did) He has also included a DVD and movies illustrating his skills; a nice touch. And he has left room for other authors to provide illustrative examples in guides organized differently.7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. This is the book to ownBy W. RobersonConfession: I was a darkroom printer for over 15 years; working mainly with medium and large-format film. I struggled with Photoshop Elements bundled with an Epson V700 scanner I had purchased (I had the Elements for Dummies book). I struggled with the Adobe manual after I purchased Photoshop CS5 (mainly because it offers 16-bit/channel editing and is easier to use than Elements); along with various online tutorials including Adobes (theyre hard to reference quickly and are nowhere as thorough and logically progressive as Evening -- theres no substitute for a book). I read the numerous reviews of various books available through . Truthfully; I was a bit intimidated by the Martin Evening reviews; as good as they were. So I initially purchased Scott Kelbys Adobe Photoshop CS5 book; along with Harold and Phyllis Davis "The Photoshop Darkroom". Kelby was good at getting me started; although it annoyed me that the "why" of his how-to examples were often lacking. The Davis book gives a rudimentary start on the invaluable Camera Raw feature of CS5 and devotes a lot of space to special effects using LAB color; which may or may not be of interest in the future (I presently am more interested in producing more or less "realistic" prints). Kelby gives much more information on Camera raw and Photoshop features. I dont regret either purchase.However; and its a BIG however; despite reviews that indicated Evenings book was for more intermediate or advanced Photoshop users; I ordered it. Unless you are looking for easy; minor photo-editing (in which case why use CS5 when there are simpler programs available?); this is the book to own. Maybe I knew more than I thought I knew but I have not found Evenings book difficult. Despite one reviewers comment that he was verbose; and others that he was for the advanced Photoshop user; I did not find this the case at all. He provides "how-to" and "why" explanations in a well-written; understandable way. His section on Camera raw is thorough; much more so than Kelbys. (Note: I am using Silverfast SE Plus with basic HDR for "raw" scanning of color and b+w negatives as well as transparencies. It took me a while to figure out; but scan color negs in 48-bit HDR mode and use Silverfasts extensive selection of color film types to neutralize the orange mask. The film type to achieve the optimal look isnt often the same as the actual film used. Experiment -- you see the differences in real time. Then use their HDR module in 48 bit color output to reverse the image from negative to positive. Then use Camera Raw for further adjustments. Inverting the negative in Photoshop works; but gives weird results since the orange mask isnt compensated for.) Much initial editing can be done more intuitively in Camera Raw than using Photoshops curves; levels and layers. I do extensively use Photoshops amazing content-aware brush for dust spotting and removing unwanted objects. His explanation on setting up Photoshop and Camera Raw preferences was alone worth the price of the book as I am working with the large (120 Mb and larger) files that result from large film scanning.Ive only read about 2/3 of the book so far and havent even yet downloaded the enclosed DVDs. Im already producing images that are up to my high standards; just weeks after receiving the book. The book is well laid out. Yes; the index is frustrating; but in fairness; to reference everything would require an index as big as the book. Despite that; I can find what Im looking for fairly quickly in the appropriate section. There are many quality before and after photos showing the effects of various tools; along with invaluable screen shots of the multitude of menus; panels and dialogues; each displayed alongside the text describing the tool or action. Truthfully; Ive scarcely glanced at Kelbys or Davis books since purchasing Evenings; and reference it frequently as I continue to learn. If a problem arises; Im confident Evening has a solution. This is unquestionably the book to own for those want to take advantage of CS5s capabilities; which appear limitless (the more I learn; the more Im in awe of the programmers who developed it). One piece of advice: my somewhat older Compaq came with ~1 gigabyte of memory. For about $70 and easy installation; I increased it to 4 gigabytes. Youll need it if working with large files; or smaller files with lots of layers. I also use an external 1 terabyte disk for backup and as Photoshops "scratch" disk (dont worry; Evening explains what it is for and it may not even be an issue depending upon your computers capabilities). A RAID setup (according to Evening) is better; but so far with my present setup; Photoshop is fast and I havent experienced any real problems.