Where would graphics professionals be without Visual QuickStart Guides like Photoshop 7 for Windows & Macintosh? Economically priced, they offer a lot of bang for your buck--hundreds of screen shots, all precisely annotated, step-by-step instructions for virtually every feature and menu, numerous insightful tips and sidebars, reference pages filled with keyboard shortcuts, a thorough index for pinpointing just the right problem area, and much more.

This latest entry is one of the best. The authors have the ability to clearly articulate what each tool and feature does, why you might want to use it, and how it works, all in a concise form--usually in eight steps or less. However, perhaps due to the multitool versatility of Photoshop, this QuickStart Guide may not the best starting point for all beginners. These are not tutorials that take you from simple ingredients to complex outcomes. Instead, the authors put the tools in your hands and help you discover what you can do with them on your own images. An analogy would be that this book is like a great car manual, but not necessarily the driving lessons. You have a problem in a project, look up the appropriate keywords in the index, and apply the steps to work out a solution.

For the experienced user, this is a fabulous reference to have on hand. (Especially those Mac users who've upgraded, since most screen shots are from OS X.) It takes readers through all the many parts of Photoshop: color management; resolution; making selections; compositing (moving, copying, sharpening and blurring, cloning, and more); using layers; the history palette (including using snapshots and the history brush); adjustment layers; working with color (including levels and curves and the spot color channel); painting; blending; masks; paths; type; filters; actions; preparing images for print or for exporting to other applications; optimizing for the Web; and making slices, rollovers, and animations. And new features have a "7.0!" call-out--for example, the new File Browser or the Healing Brush and the Patch tool, to quickly bring you up to speed with version 7.0. --Angelynn Grant


From Book News, Inc.
Weinmann and Lourekas have written other popular Visual QuickStart Guides on QuarkXPress, Illustrator, LiveMotion and Painter. Here they deliver just what they promise: detailed illustrations, concise explanations, and step-by-step instructions that should enable beginning and intermediate users to find their way around Photoshop fairly quickly. They include a special chapter for preparing images for the Internet, as well as instructions for scanning images for print and for the Web; tips for opening and adjusting images from photo CDs; basic techniques for (correctly) changing an image's dimensions or resolution; and coverage of more advanced topics such as using layers, filters, libraries, and palettes.Copyright © 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


Book Description
Adobe Photoshop is one of those programs that both dazzles and dismays: You can do extraordinary things with it--as long as you don't get lost in its maze of palettes and toolbars. Luckily for you, with Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide,, that needn't be a problem! If you're ready to take on image editing in Photoshop 7, this straight-ahead visual reference is the place to start.Veteran authors Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas are back with a completely revised edition of the guide that's become the standard for Photoshop instruction in classrooms, homes, and offices. Through clear, concise instructions and a multitude of screen shots, this book steps you through the basics of photo editing, manipulation, optimization, and correction. It also provides complete coverage of all that's new in version 7: native Mac OS X support, a new painting engine that facilitates wet and dry brush effects, and more--all in a task-based format that constantly reminds you of where you are in the program and what you're trying to accomplish.


From the Back Cover
Adobe Photoshop is one of those programs that both dazzles and dismays: You can do extraordinary things with it--as long as you don't get lost in its maze of palettes and toolbars. Luckily for you, with Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide,, that needn't be a problem! If you're ready to take on image editing in Photoshop 7, this straight-ahead visual reference is the place to start.Veteran authors Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas are back with a completely revised edition of the guide that's become the standard for Photoshop instruction in classrooms, homes, and offices. Through clear, concise instructions and a multitude of screen shots, this book steps you through the basics of photo editing, manipulation, optimization, and correction. It also provides complete coverage of all that's new in version 7: native Mac OS X support, a new painting engine that facilitates wet and dry brush effects, and more--all in a task-based format that constantly reminds you of where you are in the program and what you're trying to accomplish.


About the Author
Based in Connecticut, Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas have also written, designed, and illustrated best-selling Visual QuickStart Guides to Photoshop, QuarkXPress, Illustrator, and Painter. Their books have been translated into 12 languages and have sold more than a million copies worldwide. They have taught at Pratt Manhattan, Cooper Union School of Art, the News School Computer Instruction Center, and Parsons School of Design.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
As you may have noticed by now, we￯﾿ﾽre huge fans of the Visual QuickStart series. But we￯﾿ﾽre not alone. Take Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas￯﾿ﾽs Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide. You￯﾿ﾽll find earlier editions of this book pretty much anywhere you￯﾿ﾽll find designers. Or students. Or teachers of graphic design software. In fact, it￯﾿ﾽs been the book of choice in thousands of classrooms. And not just in North America, either: These authors￯﾿ﾽ Visual QuickStart Guides have been translated into a dozen languages.

This edition￯﾿ﾽs the best yet. Not just clear, step-by-step instructions but great sample art from realistic projects (including a breathtaking 16-page full-color collection chosen from hundreds of images offered to the authors). Real insight, real tips and tricks. (For example: Want your filter effects to look less artificial? Often, it helps to use more than one. Before you go through the trouble of making custom Channel Mixer adjustments, try the presets buried deep in Adobe￯﾿ﾽs Goodies folder. To make it look like you￯﾿ﾽre painting on the back of the current layer, use Behind Mode.)

The Table of Contents flags everything that￯﾿ﾽs covered here that's new (or substantially changed) in Photoshop 7. It￯﾿ﾽs a long list. You￯﾿ﾽll find loads of interface changes. There￯﾿ﾽs the new File Browser, of course, but also custom workspaces -- a super timesaver. (Instantly switch Photoshop to your favorite configuration of palettes and dialog boxes for whatever you￯﾿ﾽre doing now -- say, working with a text-intensive document or painting with the Brushes, Color, and Swatches palettes).

They cover big improvements like the File Browser -- and the Healing Brush and Patch Tool which, together, offer precise touchups you just couldn￯﾿ﾽt get with the Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp. But they also cover loads of subtle changes that￯﾿ﾽll make your day-to-day existence with Photoshop just a little more creative and productive.

For example, they point out a new way to rename layers. New shortcut keys that turn on the Snap feature. New PANTONE choices when you￯﾿ﾽre choosing a custom color. You￯﾿ﾽll discover the new ￯﾿ﾽSimulate Pressure￯﾿ﾽ option that thins out your path strokes partway through, for greater realism. There are new anti-aliasing options for editable type layers. New recordable Actions.

Other folks might have missed some of these neat little tweaks, but Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas know Photoshop about as intimately as anyone outside Adobe.

You￯﾿ﾽll find extensive new coverage of Photoshop painting, starting with ￯﾿ﾽBrush Palette 101￯﾿ﾽ -- all you need to know to customize tips for the Brush, Pencil, History Brush, Art History Brush, even Dodge, Burn, and Sponge (is that the name of a law firm?)

New on the ￯﾿ﾽWeb side of the house￯﾿ﾽ: lots of little improvements in rollovers, as well as the handy Transparency Dither feature, which can eliminate those annoying image haloes. But wherever your image is going after it leaves Photoshop, this book will help you get it there.

Exporting to QuarkXPress or InDesign? After Effects or Illustrator? CorelDraw? Need a TIFF, or BMP, or PICT? An EPS file? Or maybe one of those newfangled DCS 2.0 files that pre-separate your image, providing related color files for each CMYK channel, plus one for the combined CMYK channel, all while preserving spot color? It￯﾿ﾽs all covered. And we￯﾿ﾽre not just talking about ￯﾿ﾽopen dialog box X, choose option Y, click Save: We￯﾿ﾽre talking about intelligent guidance.

Should you save your layered Photoshop images to After Effects as pre-composited images? Is it just you, or do some blending modes act really strange when you place a Photoshop image into Illustrator with the Link option checked? Are you sure you know whether your new QuarkXPress prepress house wants TIFF or EPS images?

Weinmann and Lourekas also point out improvements in creating contact sheets, converting multipage PDFs to Photoshop format, creating picture packages, and generating web galleries.

If you want fast answers -- but you don￯﾿ﾽt want to feel like someone￯﾿ﾽs glossed over the gotchas or left out what matters most -- you want Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh Visual Quickstart Guide. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Adobe Photoshop is one of those programs that both dazzles and dismays: You can do extraordinary things with it--as long as you don't get lost in its maze of palettes and toolbars. Luckily for you, with Photoshop 7 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide,, that needn't be a problem! If you're ready to take on image editing in Photoshop 7, this straight-ahead visual reference is the place to start.

Veteran authors Elaine Weinmann and Peter Lourekas are back with a completely revised edition of the guide that's become the standard for Photoshop instruction in classrooms, homes, and offices. Through clear, concise instructions and a multitude of screen shots, this book steps you through the basics of photo editing, manipulation, optimization, and correction. It also provides complete coverage of all that's new in version 7: native Mac OS X support, a new painting engine that facilitates wet and dry brush effects, and more--all in a task-based format that constantly reminds you of where you are in the program and what you're trying to accomplish.

SYNOPSIS