Photoshop 6
Down & Dirty Tricks

by Scott Kelby

From Napp Publishing, Inc.
$39.95 (US), $59.95 (CAN)

Review by Gary Coyne

If you are looking for a book that's going to show all the menus and tools and break each one down to explain how they are used, this isn't your book. On the other hand, if you want to get down to the nitty gritty and do a bunch of neat things in Photoshop (and learn bunches about Photoshop at the same time, this is the book for you. This book is for intermediate and advanced users wanting the methods, the secrets, and (dare I say it) the tricks on how to accomplish the neat special effects you see on the web or in photos in magazines that you know were done in Photoshop but just didn't know how to do. Here's where Scott Kelby shows you how.

Scott Kelby is the Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User Magazine, and President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. He also has numerous other titles all focusing around Photoshop, Macintosh computers, training and publishing. This is a guy who knows his stuff and knows how to teach.

One of the aspects about this book that appealed to me the most was that it's intended for use by intermediate and advanced users and assumes that the reader isn't an idiot. At no point does it explain how to cut/copy/paste. It also assumes that the reader has some background with Photoshop. However, using me as an example, I am not a strong Photoshop user and although I did have to search for the occasional menu selection, I was never at a loss for what to do.

The book is divided into 12 chapters, and although Scott tells you that you can jump in anywhere (and you can), there is in fact a logical order to the selections within each chapter allowing you to learn and grow from each "trick." Each trick is typically two pages (more or less), with four pictures/instructions per page. Each picture is typically the result of the actions presented in the text below each picture as opposed to what a menu looks like. The text guides you though the actions to obtain the results presented. An example might be "STEP THREE: Press the letter "L " to switch to the Lasso tool. Press Shift-L until the Polygonal Lasso tool appears (used for drawing straight line selections). Draw a triangle selection (as shown above). This effect will work with other types of selections as well, so if you don't want to draw a triangle, you can use the Rectangle Marquee tool and draw a square, if you prefer."

You'll note from the above example that Scott assumes the reader can follow basic instructions. If there is a fault, the information is seldom presented with an explanation as to why you are doing what you are doing, only that this is what you do to get the desired effect. But hey, that's what this book is trying to do. On the other hand, Scott does present options available to you as you proceed through the explanations. The other "subtle" aspect of this type of explanation is that you will be learning all the nifty tricks to work more efficiently at Photoshop. There are many keyboard shortcuts that are typically ignored or only referred to in most books. Here, Scott is constantly telling you to get a tool the efficient way, not necessarily the easiest-to-explain way. After going through several lessons you wont be clicking on the toolbar anymore.

Scott also points out which techniques show up better on the screen and which show up better in print and how to adjust (when possible) any given document for one media type or the other.

I do have three complaints about this book: one stylistic, one structural, and one organizational.

First, Scott is obviously one of those people with whom it would be a pleasure to sit down and have a beer with. Obviously gregarious and chatty, he also writes that way. I found this somewhat tedious, your mileage may vary.

Second, the book is a standard-bound, 8 1/2 x 11 inch book that doesn't lie flat. There is no way you can place this book on a table by your side and try to do the lessons without constantly reaching over and trying to prevent the book from closing on you. Plan on purchasing this book with heavy-duty bulldogs or binder clips (or a brick to weight down the pages while you work). A spiral-bound binding would have been a major improvement.

Lastly, on the outside border of every page there are a wonderful handy tricks, factoids, pieces of information, what ever you want to call them. But, none of these are organized, indexed, or referred to. For example, on page 54, in the Chapter on Cool Type Effects, on the third page of the lesson called "Mondo Cool Light Burst," there is a factoid called "Getting your last settings back." This factoid deals with how to see the effects you just left when closing certain windows and not seeing the default window. The only way one can possibly find this trick is to intentionally go through each page, one by one, and happen to chance on it. If you saw a trick that you want to refer back to, start turning pages or create your own notes at the back of the book.

In the final showdown, it was this last issue that bugged me the most. This is a good book that could have been great if there had been some indexing of these wonderful tidbits of information. As they say, "it's not what you know, but whom you know." In this case, it was more "it's not what you know but can you find it?"

Otherwise, go to a bookstore and start thumbing through this book. Unless you are a supreme master Photoshop user, you will be going "Oh, so that's how..." and "Oo, I didn't know I could to that..."

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