Thursday 29 January 2009

Reviews - A good read for Photoshop CS4 users

If you buy the latest greatest Camera bodies you are normally forced to up grade various components to go with it. Like software and even your PC to work with the new programmes. This is something I had to do when I bought the Canon 1D3,To open the RAW files in Photoshop I had to buy the new CS3 as I prefer Photoshop to Canons DPP software, I could have opened the RAW files in DPP then converted to Tiff and then opened in CS2 but I like to work on a RAW not a Tiff so I purchased Photoshop CS3 and then found that my PC was too old for the new software so ended up with a new Dell-A lot of extra money on top of the Camera body, Now moving over to Nikons new bodies i purchased in advance from Adobe the new Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom programmes, CS4 is not that different to CS3 but it does have one or 2 nice new features tucked away in the ACR engine,The adjustment brush for one, Now I am the first to admit i am not really into processing and keep it to a bare minimum,I always try to get it right in camera so basically my workflow involves adjusting levels,Curves,Saturation and sharpening along with cropping and levelling if needed,So i have £500 software and use 2% of it, So i decided that now is the time to learn how to use the product more just in case I need to, After looking around the shops and forums one book kept coming up and that suit my needs-Photoshop CS4 for Nature Photographers-'A workshop in a book' By Ellen and Josh Anon, I purchased it from Amazon and for the last week or so have been going through it,The thing that I like is that it comes with a DVD that lasts about an hour and shows you how to set up 'Bridge' and runs through the new features found on CS4 over CS3,By watching the DVD you can clearly see how to do things and its done it a very simple manner-perfect for me as I hate it when people who know what they are doing write stuff like everybody would know how to do it,The book has lots of images of before and after and what the screen should look like as you are doing things-very layman's terms. It's priced here in the states at $39.99 but on Amazon its much cheaper-A good read and perfect for the Nature Photographer who is trying to get his/her head around Photoshop CS4-Now just need to get one for Lightroom 2







Dave

3 comments:

  1. Hi Dave,
    If you are looking for a Lightroom 2 book I can highly recommend Scott Kelby's Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers. I don't have Photoshop and spent ages deliberating which book to get. Having just written this I see it's under your " We Recommend " section!! Anyway having had a couple of books on Lightroom 1 which I couldn't get on with I plumped for this one and haven't regretted my decision.
    Neil

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  2. Thanks for that Neil,I have heard good reports of previous Scott Kelby books and have seen him on adobe.tv

    Dave

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  3. I have quit buying Kelby's books as I just don't see the value in the standup comedy routine he tries to write into them. No doubt he is an excellent and knowledgeable person. I purchased Martin Evening's Lightroom 2 book and it is a great book with a great deal of detail on virtually every subject you can imagine. He explains things very well.
    Stimson

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