The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Layers Book: Harnessing Photoshop's most powerful tool,   ISBN:9780240521558

Customer Rating: 

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Layers Book by Richard Lynch does the job. It thoroughly covers each trick and nuance of learning layers. It peels back each layer of Photoshop allowing the reader to learn how to edit images in a nondestructive manner. Explanations are thorough and examples are in color and numerous. The hands-on practice files are icing on the cake. I liked it so well that I bought two copies of the book--one for my office at work and one for home. It's a great reference for the professional digital artist as well as the occasional dabbler. I can't wait to buy Richard Lynch's next book.

Customer Rating: 

Generally this is a well-conceived text with a lot of good reference information and useful examples showing the full gamut of Photoshop's layering capabilities. It is a general reference so many workflows apply here, including things like retouching, artistic options and compositing, though there isn't a lot of information on the latter type. In general it's what I might call "foot deep, mile wide" rather than "inch deep, mile wide." There is a newer, photo-centric book from Peachpit called Real World Compositing, as well as Steve Caplain's popular book "How to Cheat in Photoshop" (also from Focal), if you're interested in combining photos.

The one vexing issue with this book here is that it visually breaks down the how-to copy in blocks of text on a color background, while other types of "tips" and special copy have different color backgrounds, and the general explanation copy is against page white. What results is that in some sections the pages become very cluttered with "boxes" in the forms of screen caps, colored text regions and white text regions, all jumbled together. It can be difficult at any given point in the book to know exactly where you are or what context you're in (unless you happen to be on a page with a section header or the start of a chapter). Overall though the information herein is useful and worth a look if you don't have a good book on retouching (most of which cover layers extensively). Definitely preferable to any of Kelby's quick-tricks books IMHO as it has more depth and context.

Customer Rating: 

Deserving of ongoing mention and recommendation is one of the most powerful, effective Photoshop 'how to' books on the market: a guide to the notoriously tricky Layers part of the program. A visual, hands- on guide comes from a digital imaging specialist who provides step-by-step directions and practical applications for image manipulation using the layers feature. Screenshots and color sidebars of information make this simply invaluable.

Customer Rating: 

The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Layers Book: Harnessing Photoshop's most powerful tool

I am somewhat familiar with Photoshop and its capabilities, but this book really opened my eyes to what can be done with layers and has really changed my work flow when editing images. There is more information here about layers than I thought was possible, and some of the techniques described are pretty advanced, but for now this has become my goto book on Photoshop.

Customer Rating: 

This book is packed full of good information, but I don't find it a quick and easy reference. It is probably a better book for experienced Photoshop users, I am a beginner so it is a little more difficult to follow.