Review - Real World Photoshop CS2

Bruce Fraser and David Blatner are acknowledged experts on Photoshop, between them they have authored or co-authored a number of books on the subject and they clearly have a wealth of practical, hands on experience which really shows here.  This book is aimed at photographers, concentrating on subjects such as tone and colour correction, raw conversion, noise reduction, sharpening and basic image tweaking with the cloning and healing tools.  Areas such as special effects and creating images from scratch are not included here.

Each topic is covered in great depth, often with several different techniques being described to achieve similar ends, there are numerous practical examples to follow.  It is difficult to define which technique would be right for a given scenario as each image is different, but they make a good effort to describe the pros and cons to enable you to make that decision.  Experimentation is encouraged and non-destructive editing techniques are described and promoted throughout.

This book is not for the Photoshop beginner, to get the most out of it you would need to understand the basics.  Having said that, the writing style is quite chatty and readable which makes it easier to follow and more enjoyable than others which I've read that are aimed at the same level.

The book has really enabled me to get more out of Photoshop, yes we'd all like to take perfect shots that don't need any "improvement" but we've all got grainy snapshots taken of a once in a lifetime opportunity, or that box of faded polaroids that Granny wants you to fix and it's with these challenges that it will really help you.  Although some time and effort would need to be invested to get fully familiar with the techniques described once learned great results are possible more quickly than you would believe.

I've read a number of books on Photoshop and this one has been the most beneficial, I've read it from cover to cover and often return to it when faced with a photographic problem that I can't resolve.  I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who's sure that they should be able to achieve more with that very expensive software they have installed on their computer.