Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Solid reference, needs a little polish.
Comment: The Missing Manual is a solid reference - it certainly meets my needs as a Photoshop beginner. I also purchased The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter) which led to a four stars rating for this book.
Previous reviews pointed to two peculiar issues with the publication. First, that the cover, particularly the spine, did not seem secure. Yes, the cover on my book was also floating away from the spine. It looks like the publisher deliberatly chose this construction. I worry about the durability since the book requires a good deal of flipping between sections.
A second complaint was that the graphics in the book are not clear. Yes, some of the screen shots are muddy (washed out). Considering the topic of the book, you would expect better visual presentation.
When visually compared to the VTM book referenced above, this book falls well short. The content of the two books is widely different. VTM is really for the advanced photographer working in a Production environment.
General content and step-by-step instructions in the Missing Manual are excellent. I have been able to recreate the sample exercises - they cover every click of every step. It is possible to open to any chapter to brush-up or practice. Some of the smaller dialogue surrounding file formats and alternatives to the crop tool deserve more emphasis. You will need to read deeply to find these gems.
Again, the content is excellent. If the publisher had taken the time to improve the binding and the graphics this book could have been a solid 5 Stars. ~CTC
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic book for many levels of user
Comment: Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing ManualI've been reading "Missing Manual" books for several years now and have enjoyed each of them. "Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual" is one of the best I've seen in the line. True to other Missing Manuals, this volume is very clearly written and extraordinarily comprehensive. The author, Barbara Brundage, assumes only the most basic knowledge on the part of readers. Every aspect of Photoshop Elements 6 (PSE6) that I was interested in was explained thoroughly.
There are a number of chapters that go into quite a bit of depth about all aspects of the program. For example, in past versions, selecting parts of the image for editing was cumbersome. PSE6 introduces some key capabilities that vastly simplify the process and produce great results, and Brundage spends a lot of space describing and illustrating these tools and methods very well. In fact, illustrations are a strength of this book: they're wonderful. Everything that should be illustrated is, and there are few illustrations I would remove from the book--a very welcome use of space. But I digress.
Layers is a key aspect of Photoshop-style image editing, and the book describes layers and their use very clearly. I've been a Photoshop user for several years and with what I've learned from this book, it's clear that I haven't been using them to nearly their potential. It's always good to learn one's tools better, and this Missing Manual has certainly helped me to do that.
Image retouching is covered very well. I'd pair this book with Scott Kelby's excellent "The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers" (ISBN10 0-321-52464-0). The Missing Manual tells what all the tools are and goes into the basics of how/what the tools are; software usage sorts of things. I view Kelby's book as more of a problem-solving volume. While The Missing Manual tells about the toolbox and how to use it, Kelby's volume does a stronger job of addressing specific retouching situations and how to use PSE6 to remedy them--more like a very good cookbook.
The Missing Manual does so many things so well that it's really hard to enunciate in a brief review. For example, throughout the book are comparisons with the full version of Photoshop CS3. This is helpful in deciding whether you need the full version, and what you'd get by switching. It also articulates differences between PSE6 and earlier versions, and between the Mac and PC versions. And the book is indexed very well (this is important to me).
This truly is the book that should have shipped with every copy of PSE6. I highly recommend it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This book unlocks PSE6
Comment: This is a manual that actually reads well. I have not had it long enough to have mastered PSE6 but am dealing with one task at a time, as the author recommends.
PSE6 can be intimidating, particularly if you need the help of a written manual. We all have different learning styles and remembering what I just read in the online manual from Adobe and applying it to my project doesn't work for me.
The author walks you through each process and says it several different ways. I am really enjoying this book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is not "The Missing Manual" for a beginner.
Comment: I have read the first six chapters of this book and have found it very difficult to follow. The pictures are unreadable and of little use. This book is not for beginners. It might serve as a reference for a Photoshop Elements expert user but definitely not for a new user.
It's been about a week since I wrote the above paragraph. Since that time I received a copy of "Photoshop Elements for Dummies" and have gone through it from cover to cover. The "Dummies" book gave me the basics I needed and now "The missing Manual" is working. I will use this for a reference. It seems to go deeper into any given subject.
I cannot seem to change my original rating from one star to three.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well Named
Comment: Every one who uses Adobe Photoshop Elements should have this book. It is well written and covers Elements exhaustively and understandably.
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