The Bottom Line
Photoshop 7 Savvy will help beginning to intermediate users of Photoshop master the program more thoroughly with practical instruction and a good variety of hands-on practice tutorials.
Pros
- Nine hands-on tutorials; practice files on CD
- Good for beginner to intermediate level users
- More than 1/3 of the book is fairly advanced
Cons
- A lot to absorb before putting it to practice
- Too much hand-holding in the tutorials
Description
- 600 pages; black and white with 32 color pages; includes a CD with tutorial images for practice.
- Part I: Core - Foundations of Photoshop, What's New, Basic Concepts, Navigation & Setup...
- ... Basics of Selections, Layers, Type, Paths, Creating & Applying Color...
- ... History, Channels & Quick Mask, Sizing & Transforming Images, Capturing Images.
- Part II: Color - Color Management and Printing, Adjusting Tone & Color...
- ... Modifying and Mapping Color, Duotones & Spot Color.
- Part III: Savvy - Retouching, Restoration, Filters, Advanced Selections & Layers, Automation.
- Part IV: WWW and Digital Video - Web Design, Imageready, and Digital Video.
- Hands-on: selections; layers/type; painting, paths & history; channels; image size, transformation…
- … & color adjustment; duotones & spot color; restoring a photo, advanced layers, Web & ImageReady.
Guide Review - Photoshop 7 Savvy by Steve Romaniello
Photoshop 7 Savvy is a good choice both for beginning and intermediate users of Photoshop who want a broad view of the program including many of the new features in Photoshop 7. The instruction is clear, and the nine hands-on tutorials help you put what you've read into practice. Unfortunately, beginners have to get through six chapters before they have a chance to put the information to practice and see some results. Later on, some of the practice files are set up with part of the work done for you, so they don't always give you a taste of the problems you may encounter in real-world projects. Still, there's quite a lot covered, both for brand-new Photoshop 7 users, and intermediate users who want to extend their knowledge.
