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Photoshop 6.0, Shop manual

by Donnie O'Quinn
New Riders
1074 pages
U.S. $39.99 (Canada $59.95, UK £30.99)

Review by Gary Coyne

Photoshop 6, Shop Manual by Donni O'Quinn, 1074 pages, New Riders, 2 color for most of the book, but one chapter of full color for color explanation. U.S. $39.99 (Canada $59.95, UK £30.99)

This book is like no other book I've ever seen. For one thing, the sub title: Shop Manual, is very cleverly aimed at and used. If you've ever seen a machinist manual, they somehow got the ambiance and feel right at the cover level. The book is a bit narrower than most books and the stark black cover with gold logo just hint at the fact that this is not your normal book.

So, what is this book? Let me explain it this way. There are 26 Chapters. The first chapter is called Selection Tools, the 2nd is called Paint Tools, the 14th Chapter is called The View Menu, the 23rd Chapter is called The Channels Palette. Do you see the trend here?

What this book does is go from tool to tool, menu to menu, and palette to palette and explains what each one does and how all the sub-features work and interrelate. Bizarre? Yes, and wonderful.

Consider: how often have you tried to learn how to use a feature in a program, and in the book there is a picture of a palette or menu, and there's a feature that you think you might need or simply want to know what it does? So, you go to the Index and that term/word is not to be found. And, as you struggle through the book you realize that not everything is mentioned. Or, some feature might be mentioned, but not explained. Well, in this book EVERYTHING is not only mentioned, but explained. And, examples are provided to properly teach you what the explanations mean.

Within each explained item, there are also "Issues to Consider." That is (for example), you can open up a pdf file in Photoshop and extract separate photo images. However, you are restricted to using the file as Acrobat Distiller saved it. That is, if the image is highly compressed, that's what you have to work with. If the image was not compressed, you will have a better quality image to work with. Getting a high quality image from a pdf saved at high compression is beyond Photoshop's (or any other program's) capabilities.

But wait, there's more...

There are 15 Appendices. The "B" Appendix is called Selection Techniques, the "G" Appendix is called Color Adjusting Techniques, the "L" Appendix is called Path Editing Techniques.

Thus, this is more than just a book on what everything does, it also provides some "how do you do its" as well. Like a Shop Manual, the techniques presented here are presented in a do this, do this, do this. But, there are so many tricks and techniques presented that there is much to learn.

Despite this book having the most number of pages of the four books, there is an economy in the use of pictures. My only complaint is that in the Chapter on the "View Menu," I would have liked a screen shot of the View Menu (or any other menu, or of all the tools). I suppose this is because I'm the kind of person that when I go off somewhere and need a book to fill time with, I'm just as likely to grab a computer book as a novel. As such I may not have a computer with me to visually remind me of what I'm reading about. Also, if I'm looking up one particular item in a menu, seeing the entire menu may toggle my mind that I want to look up something else as well. I am a very visual person, and seeing things is very important to my work flow. I would very much like to see some generic screen shots of the menus and tools in the next version.

This is not to say that there are no screen shots. Many items, such as dialogue boxes are presented in the book with letter call-outs. Thus, for example, when looking at the Blending Options controls (in the Layers Style dialog box), each option is identified with a simple explanation of what it does AND what/how the other options affect/effect that feature. In the section on Filters, the Shop Manual also provides suggestions on work flow such as which filters should be used early or last in any process so as to not remove all your work in one filter by later applying other techniques.

This is a very effective and excellent book. As I have been reading book after book, it is rather hard at this point to decide whether this could be a standalone book. That is, the only extra book one would need to purchase. I think it could. However, if you already have one Photoshop book and want that something extra, Photoshop 6, Shop Manual should strongly be considered as the final extra book.

Buy Photoshop 6.0, Shop Manual

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