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556 pages U.S. $44.99 (Canada $67.50, UK £33.99) Review by Gary Coyne
Adobe Photoshop 6, Studio Techniques by Ben Willmore 556 pages, full color throughout book, comes with CD. Adobe Press US $44.99, Canada $67.50, UK £33.99 Ben Willmore was born to teach. To attend his seminars, to read his weekly Photoshop Tip of the Week, to read his book(s), you have to admit that he has a gift for breaking down complex ideas into understandable practical applications. This is not his first Adobe Photoshop book, and in this version he often suggests to the reader that any given chapter has had major revisions and should not be passed up. In fact, if you have attended some of Ben's seminars, you may recognize some of the photos and examples in this book. It's worth revisiting any of these as there is invariably new material interspersed with the text. The book begins at the beginning, literally. Ben starts by letting the reader learn how to prepare their workspace and learn how to best use the palettes. That is, he shows how one can bring up and temporarily remove palettes, toolbars, even menus by key combinations to best achieve an economical work flow. Once he feels the reader can maneuver around the basic program, he then introduces some basic approaches to basic techniques such as selections and layers. He tells the reader from the get go that this is only an introduction, but with such, one can start to do a significant variety of Photoshop operations. Subsequent chapters will reintroduce some of these techniques but in greater depth. In Part 2, he introduces resolution and scanning, and devotes a full chapter to Line Art Scanning. To prepare us for color, he starts by teaching the reader how to Optimize Greyscale Images. From there he slips into Curves, Color Correction and then Channels. In Part 3 he (finally) gets into some of the cool tricks of Photoshop by covering Shadows, Image Blending, Enhancement, Retouching, and Type (text) and Background Effects. It is not until the last section, Part 4, where the web is formally delved into. This includes techniques on how to use Image ready, the web tool now bundled with Photoshop. Here, Ben covers Interface Design, Slicing and Rollovers, Animation, and Optimization. Within the book are sidebars such as "Notes," "Warnings," and "What's new for 6.0." Interestingly, this is the only book of the set that has sidebars. As I was reading through the book, I was wishing I could get my hands on the various photos used as examples so I could try to see whether I could get the same level of results that Ben had achieved. On the accompanying CD I was pleased to discover that for every chapter, Ben includes many of the photos used in the book. However, as not every photo is included, it is not possible to duplicate all of Ben's examples. Interestingly, there are other photos included that are not part of those used in the text. Another inclusion on the CD are supplemental sections to a variety of chapters. This is great as often the publisher needs the "final" copy of the book long before the writer really is ready to give the book up for good. I guess if I had one frustration with this book, and one wish list for the next release, is comparison of techniques. For example, Ben talks of how Levels are good and how Curves are fantastic for accomplishing the same thing, but he throws us a couple of ringers. For example in the section on Curves, he shows us a photo of a Polar Bear in a snow storm (literally) and gives us a "before and after" view of the photo. Not only does he not explain to us how this was done, but the photo appears to have some variety of colors in the book. Yet, the sample photo for us to try on the CD is a greyscale image. What would have been wonderful is if he had taken this one photo (or rather any of the photos used in this section) and manipulated it in Levels and then take THE SAME PHOTO and manipulate it with Curves. That way we could not only see for ourselves what the difference might be, but also teach us how to achieve these abilities. But, these are quibbles in regards to the whole book. Where Ben Willmore shines is his ability to lay a foundation of basics and then build from there. Using this book, from beginning to end, any beginner or intermediate Photoshop user can become a better Photoshop user. Buy Adobe Photoshop 6.0, Studio Techniques  Adobe Photoshop 6.0, Studio Techniques Photoshop, Photo-retouching Secrets
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