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The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers
(New Riders Press)
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Scott Kelby's The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers (New Riders Press) belongs in the library of anyone who shoots digital glamour.
And that makes it exceptional.
One could take it for granted that authors of Photoshop books must really know their Photoshop. One could be mistaken.
There are far too many Photoshop books, collecting dust on users' shelves, that have long expanses of boilerplate text,
dull and inappropriate, masking the author's sketchy knowledge of the subject.
But no one would accuse Scott Kelby of not knowing his business. He is the editor of Photoshop User Magazine,
a frequent speaker at photographic trade shows, and a veritable publishing machine on all things Adobe. Further,
Kelby passes the real test of someone who truly knows his subject; he can explain it.
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This book first appeared in 2001 and is updated with each new version of Photoshop.
Kelby has heavily revised this version - it is 80 pages longer than its predecessor -
and, as usual, he gives voluminous credit to those, natural and supernatural, associated with the project.
The CS2 Book is encyclopedic rather than narrative. It is not a book to be read straight through,
nor learned sequentially like a Photoshop course. It is a collection of the best techniques that
Kelby has assembled for solving specific problems or for enhancing images, so it is best read in small
pieces as your needs or curiosities dictate. And every time you touch it, odds are you will come away with something useful.
The unique strength of this book is that each technique is illustrated in concise one to
four page sections of step-by-step instructions. Instead of the typical vague description, e.g., "and then I desaturated the photo to make it monochrome," Kelby offers detailed instructions of several methods of converting to a grayscale or a two-color image. The instructions are clear, unambiguous, and delivered in digestible chunks.
New to this edition are a full chapter on Adobe Bridge, a full chapter on handling images in raw format, and small chapters on creating posters and gallery prints and on creating panoramic photos. All good material. The section on extracting subjects from the background has been expanded, and the section on creating a collage from multiple photos has been improved. The information is similar to that in the earlier edition but the illustrations are much better.
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The book is organized into ten topics: file handling, raw image editing, cropping and resizing, color management and correction, monochrome and duotone conversions, image cleanup, head shot and body retouching, sharpening, creating panoramas, display/printing, and a few special effects. Although claiming no special devotion to glamour photography, much of the CS2 Book is directed toward images of people and concentrates on subjects at the heart of digital glamour photography, e.g., body contouring, facial features, adjusting skin tone, etc.
Some examples:
Skin tone correction: First Kelby explains how to use a four-tone gray reference card - which is included with the book - to achieve proper exposure in a studio portrait session. He then shows how to adjust flesh tones in a normal RGB mode photo, and also how to prepare flesh tones in images that are going to be printed on a press (calendars, brochures, magazines, etc.).
Portraits: Kelby provides separate treatments for skin, eyes, eyebrows, and teeth. This includes sections on whitening and brightening eyes, changing eye color, whitening teeth and removing blemishes, wrinkles, and dark circles under the eyes. He also covers removing hot (overexposed) spots on the skin.
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Skin smoothing: In an interesting change from the previous edition, Kelby has removed the Glamour Skin Softening section which featured the conventional technique of blurring the image and then erasing the blur from areas you want sharp - eyes, lips, hair, etc. He retains a more elaborate technique which uses separate layers and different blend modes to achieve greater control over the softening effect.
And, of course, body sculpting: Using the very potent free transform, liquify, and cloning tools, Kelby shows how to perform digital nose jobs, face slimming, and body contouring. (There is a bit of a whopper here. Kelby offers a perfectly good demonstration of how to remove "love handles," but leaves the shadow of the love handle behind as a mysterious residue on the model’s hip.)
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And there is an abundance of less glamour-specific but still useful information including an extensive treatment on how to print and present your images. Kelby also tackles the
devilish business of masking and cutting out subjects from the background.
All is not perfect with The CS2 Book. A useful section on eyebrows and eyelashes from the earlier edition has been severely truncated and Kelby’s choice of photos for the illustrations is often puzzling. Perhaps he wants to use images that are typical of a beginning photographer, but many of them are so bad you wonder why someone would bother editing them at all. The girl in the eyebrows section has blacked-out eyes. The photo of the girl in the Dark Circles section is badly, not elegantly, overexposed, and the expression on the girl in the Transforming a Frown to a Smile section is just plain weird.
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But these are quibbles. The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers is an important resource. Kelby characterizes himself as constantly on the prowl for new and better editing techniques and this book is the payoff. Even experienced Photoshop users will find valuable techniques here.
Doc Glidewell (omp #15389)
Copyright 2007 R.A. Glidewell
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