Since I'm totally convinced that I'll never have enough time on the planet to learn all the things I'm interested in learning, I try to keep picking up something new to work on in fairly rapidfire order. This year I started with learning how to shoot a compound bow and make my own arrows. Hopefully, those skills will prove to be useful when I head up to visit my Uncle Don in Fargo this November to go deer hunting (something I've never done before).
But before I get up there, I've decided that I want to really find out what Photoshop can do. My original goal was to get skilled enough to let me convert a particular picture of Larry and Gary Green into a "masterpiece" that is both fun and interesting. To do this, I've acquired 4 new books, completed one and have scanned the other 3 as I start on the second and third books ... and they're really great. First I got "Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop" and I've completed the 21 lessons in that book. It's a bit more than an introduction, but it gives extremely straightforward steps using Camera Raw and Photoshop to update good pictures with varying flaws. That gave me most of what I needed to make my new picture ... but it also got me interested in digital photography, raw files, DNG and really understanding how it all works.
The other 3 books I have, that I highly recommend, are "Camera Raw With Adobe Photoshop CS3" by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe, "The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book For Digital Photographers", by Scott Kelby and the "Photoshop CS3 Bible", by Laurie Ulrich Fuller and Robert C. Fuller. The only problem I've had so far with these books is minor. It concerns the "humor" that Scott Kelby interjects into his work. It gets to be a little too much. But I already was aware of this when I bought the second Kelby book ... also filled with practical applications of Photoshop ... and the fact that I bought it (anyway) means that I think it's got many fine teaching examples to offer. Of course, the "Bible" is primarily for reference, which I'll need quite a bit of, I'm sure.
Not wanting to leave things half done, I've now also ordered a Nikon D5000 camera so I can take pictures in raw format and go from "A to Z" in the Photoshop process with some of my own shots. Another experiment in learning ... about to take off. We'll see how it goes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Bruce Fraser's (post mortem with Jeff Schewe's help) is an excellent resource for the ins and outs of Adobe Camera Raw.
For picking up the basics and a general tour of Photoshop I like the Deke McClelland books.
Also, I can recommend "Photoshop CS4 for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book" by Ellen Anon even though I have the CS3 version of that book. I don't think it is necessarily limited to nature photogs, but gives a nice general workflow for processing your photos in Photoshop.
I don't care for Kelby's style too much, it does get old. I have his CS3 for Photographers and Lightroom 2 for Photographers books, which have their helpful points. One thing I don't like is he never includes a DVD with files or videos. I'm a visual person and like the books that let me work along (like Anon's book) or at least let me watch (like McClelland's books).
Good luck in learning Photoshop! I've used it for years but learn new things all the time.
Post a Comment