(Back to Photoshop 7 Books Introduction)

Photoshop 7 Magic

by Sherry London & Rhoda Grossman

From New Riders Publishing
(c) 2002 Sherry London & Rhoda Grossman
ISBN 0-7357-1264-6
289 pps, w/ CD
$45 (US), $69.99 (CAN) UK £34.99

Review by Gary Coyne

Intended user: Intermediate to Advanced.

So you, a good friend and ten other friends get together to write a book. Your goal is to cover some of the features and capabilities of the new Photoshop 7 program from Adobe. Between the twelve of you, sixteen different techniques are detailed. Some chapters are collaborations, some are lone creations. An overall format is decided upon and everyone agrees to do their part.

This in a nutshell is what Photoshop 7 Magic is all about. Forgive me for being trite, but the book is more than the sum of its chapters. Each chapter may provides more than just one lesson for a given technique to be fully explored. The 16 different lessons are divided into three main categories, Artistic Techniques (7 lessons), Web Techniques (3 lessons), and Image Manipulation Techniques (6 lessons).

Each chapter starts with a photo of the final result. The CD provides the base image(s) used and the reader is invited to follow along with the lesson to get to the final result. While no technique is solely dependant upon any other in the book, each is expected to be a lesson in itself and should be followed from start to finish. Part of the reason for this is the first time (for example) any command's path is presented (e.g., Images/Adjust/Levels), subsequent entrees of the same are presented just as Levels.

While not every technique may interest you, there should be enough to make you want to follow the process. Within each chapter is the basic lesson plan and (typically) a few other samples and/or examples to continue the lesson for a fuller comprehension of the whole process.

For example, in Chapter 2, "Brush Techniques," this chapter's author, Rhoda Grossman, starts with explaining basic brush techniques. Starting with creating a basic brush, Rhoda then moves on to scattering techniques, textured brushes, customizing brush libraries, and finally using brushes to create a still life painting. Modifications are presented so you can learn how to get variations on what you've done.

As would be expected, anytime you have a collaboration like this, not every author will speak to you the same way. Despite variations on subjects and materials, I was generally pleased with how well each author presented their material. While some subject's presentations appealed more to me than others, none of them were disappointing.

Among the things that I liked in this book was the full Index of Techniques on the inside cover. Here, for example, under the subject Adjustment Levels, three techniques are listed. One of these three was called "Image Composites Using Extract Image." Further down the Index was a selection called Compositing. Amongst the two selections there was the same example just mentioned. This same example is yet again listed in the Index selection called Layers. This is great as many things in Photoshop are more than just one thing and represent broad levels of understanding. Further, to fully understand any Photoshop technique, it must be studied in a variety of uses. That's what this index is purporting to do, and it does it well.

One of the benefits of a subject being addressed multiple ways as this book does is that one author's presentation may be just what you need while a different author's presentation may just be off the mark. This happens all the time. But what's good here is that you have multiple authors in the same book as opposed to having to purchase several books to get the same benefit.

Overall I liked this book a lot and feel that it is a good compendium book for the Photoshop user who wishes to advance to new levels.

.