Good but needs more explanations as why an action is chosen

books:

	• Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Voices) Scott Kelby Peachpit Press, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 83 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

May be useful for some; but will drive some users crazy...

This book may be what you need, or it may actually drive you nuts, quite quickly. This depends on your skill level in photoshop, your personality, and your actual needs regarding photos (i.e., what you need them for). Since some of the reviews formerly posted here sound like something a company marketing team may write, a few clarifications may be in order before you purchase this book.

First, the somewhat misleading title: sure, SEVEN is a nice number with lots of ancient tradition (e.g., from seven deadly sins, and seven virtues to seven habits of highly successful people, etc.) Alas, there aren't just seven "points". It's more like SEVENTY.

Scott Kelby (as always very articulate and mercifully NOT trying to be too humorous this time) uses some very wide, general, and often COMPLEX concepts, and treats them as ONE "point" each. So, for example, one such point (among seven) is "use Adobe Camera RAW to make all appropriate / necessary adjustments" (I am paraphrasing here) - but that is hardly ONE point: it includes setting / adjusting white balance, exposure, white / black point, fussing with shadows, initial sharpening, clarity / vibrance, saturation, etc. Another example of such single "point" (among the seven) would be "painting with light": which sounds good and simple, but actually involves working with multiple adjustment layers, and creating numerous, often quite complex, variable density masks for localized adjustments - so much so, that some images wind up being a sandwich of more than four layers, each with its own masks, individual transparency settings, and blending modes - hardly "one simple point" again.

As a result, fixing many example photos turns out to be a LENGTHY process which often involves more than 20 steps, many of which are in turn complex, multi-step procedures that require both practice and skill (e.g., hand painting precise masks with brushes of progressively diminishing opacity, or using selection drawing tools). Needless to say, such level of precision is best implemented working with a tablet / stylus, and is going to be less-than-pleasant (and successful) using a mouse, a point which needs to be made clearly (and the book doesn't do it). If it is to be done right, it will also be time consuming.

Other issues further add to the above problem: some techniques (such as "faking" water reflections by flipping and blending the actual non-reflected image) will be seen as questionable by many serious photographers. If you ethically don't object to doing this type of "deep-pixel editing", then why not just composit-in a sky or other element taken from another, better-exposed photo altogether? Also, as one reviewer has mentioned previously, some procedures use settings that are arbitrary (7-7-7 for defining a black point when working with curves), and do not include a good explanation of the WHY of the processes involved.

Yet another issue is the fact, that such very heavy reliance on aggressive editing in ACR (especially since Kelby sometimes uses 8-bit jpg files in ACR and not 12-bit RAW) often winds up producing images that are "punchy" (or garish, depending on how you see it), but at the expense of unnatural-looking color shifts, posterization, and artefacts visible EVEN at the very small print sizes used in the book (under 2 inches?) - I encourage you to look at the example of a "before and after" on the p. 31. Would you really want your sunset/sunrise photos to look like that? Perhaps this may be acceptable for saving a one-of-a-kind, 4x6 shot for a family album, but I don't see it having much potential for anything else (e.g., 8x10 or a serious print). Yes, there definitely are many example photos that benefit greatly from the procedures outlined in the book, but that's mostly because many were GOOD (reasonably correctly exposed) photos to start with, and simply needed help to get rid of the characteristic "dull" / "flat" look so typical of baseline RAW files. Most also rely of Kelby's experience and intuition in deciding which steps (of the seven) to implement and which to skip in each case.

There is also a more serious, practical issue here: if you are going to spend several HOURS fixing one, not-very-good-quality photo, and repeat that lengthy (and eventually repetitive and boring) process with some frequency, wouldn't you be better off just spending A FEW hours ONCE to take a workshop with a good photographer, so that your BETTER photos do not need such convoluted and extensive "fixing" in post all the time?

To summarize: the book outlines some useful, if excessively complex techniques to fix (smaller) photos. Many of these techniques will not be feasible on photos meant for larger print sizes, unless a stylus, considerable time, patience for trial-and--error, and precision masking skills are used. For remedying of casual snapshots for a family album, many techniques presented here, although potentially useful, will be an overkill for most users. For professional users and serious advanced CS3 photo-amateurs, this book is too formulaic to be useful.

On the plus side, the book is well written, carefully edited, and has a generous amount of well-described screen shots and (small) "before-and-after" photos.

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Good but needs more explanations as why an action is chosen

I whole heartily agree with "Photoshop Wannabe". I am the WHY type of person too. Photoshop UI is non-intuitive. I was following Lesson 1, and stumped on step 15. No where I can find a "Gradient Thumbnail" to click. I spent the next 10 minutes searching for help and other source to no avail. In desperation, I started clicking everywhere on Gradient Fill pop-up window and accidentally activated "Gradient Editor" window. Who in the right mind would call the Gradient drop-down box "Gradient Thumbnail". And Photoshop basically breaks UI rules in every book to use a drop-down box to activate a dialog window.

A suggestion for next revision is to add more descriptions perhaps in later lessons to explain why an action is chosen and what other actions may also do the trick but not as well as the chosen action in a given situation.

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Beg to differ with the naysayers

After many years of professional graphics work (mostly vector graphics) with programs other than Photoshop, I bit the bullet in my retirement years and bought Photoshop determined to learn it (hopefully) as well as my previous programs. I soon found the learning curve to be very steep indeed. I learned bits and pieces, was able to get around in the program pretty well, make adequate adjustments, even learned some surprisingly effective "arty" techniques. In short, I thought I was getting a pretty good handle on the program in general.

As long as I had invested that many dollars in a computer program, I figured a few more dollars for a promising sounding book couldn't hurt. After going through only the first part of the book, I figure the book is totally paid for and then some. As comfortable as I was working with layers and some of the other Photoshop tricks learned previously, I simply didn't have a clue about the real power "hidden" in the program. The first "lesson" takes a downloaded photo (which probably wouldn't have made it out of my camera) and step by step turns into a fairly decent shot. Along the way I probably doubled or tripled my knowledge of some of Photoshop's capabilities.

I would agree that some of the steps outlined in the book are complex, and perhaps difficult to understand, and most of all, probably not even required for a well exposed, perfectly composed photo. But then, if all photos fit that description, why do we need Photoshop at all? This book may well be for "beginners" in Photoshop, but my guess is that if a "beginner" took this book seriously and mastered it, by the end the beginner would be as competent as many self described "experts".

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I would definitely recommend this book

Finally, a book that you can actually use and not have sitting on the shelf collecting dust! I enjoyed working on the photos right along with the book. Scott Kelby puts his spin on this book, like his other best selling ones, and makes this enjoyable in his" teaching stlye" way!
I now go about editing in a completly different way and with fantastic results!!! With this "7-Point System", I plan on editing previous photos for a better result than before. Especially, when it comes to a backlit sky and underexposed foreground!
What is so great about this book, is that Scott takes you right from the beginning to the end! Everything is covered! With each lesson, you know what Scott will do next and why he is doing it that way.
So go out, get this book and I assure you, it won't be collecting dust!
Thank you Scott Kelby on a job well done!!!

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reviews: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, page 15, 16, 17

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