What attracted me to this book the most were the before-and-after examples and exercises, which showed exactly how to transform the most mundane photographs into stunning finished products. I also liked how the author, obviously an experienced photographer, explained Photoshop features as they applied to real-world photography. As an advanced amateur, I appreciated having this viewpoint available.

Although some of this book is too advanced for the beginner, anyone with a little experience in Photoshop will be quickly applying these techniques to their own work. The explanations on how to mimic cross-processing looks, do sophisticated retouching and compositing, and duplicating darkroom techniques were worth the price of the book alone. I also thought the author's explanation of why an image can't be converted from color to black and white simply by using desaturation controls was the most clear of any I've read.

Based on my positive experience with this book, I've also picked up the author's book on retouching and will be diving into it next.

Thanks for a great book!

Part of the value of books on photoshop, particularly ones about digital photography, is in showing you how to take reasonable shots and make them better. In these examples the photos start bad and sometimes get worse. The problem is visible even on the cover. The photoshopped flag looks awful.

Definitely not the book for digital photographers looking to get the most out of photoshop. I recommend O'Reilly's Digital Photography: Expert Techniques instead.

This book covers Photoshop CS from the photographic perspective very well. I liked learning about all the new features and how they apply to digital photography. This book is slightly more advanced than a beginner will want, but it explains well at the intermediate to advanced level.

While this book isn't for the absolute beginner, it really helped me learn about Photoshop as it applies to digital photography. I learned lots of cool tricks for manipulating my images. The step-by-step tutorials showed me how to correct colors, retouch images, and combine several photographs into one great picture.

This new edition for Photoshop CS is well-organized into sections that build on each other, so as I worked through the chapters I became more confident and ready to try more challenging things. I think this book has helped me improve my Photoshop skills, and it sure has made me a better photographer.

Although I have never worked in a darkroom, I enjoyed the chapter on duplicating darkroom effects such as solarization and cross processing. I don't really miss not using a darkroom, but I'm glad I didn't miss out on these special effects! I also really liked the chapter on the special effects filters for Photoshop.

Also useful were the working files on available from the Web site, which let me use the exact photos the author worked with. Once I tried out the steps using the original pictures, I was more confident in trying the same techniques on my own photos.

As a crazy cat person, I loved the photos of the adorable kitten, too! I'm glad I upgraded to this new edition. It was worth it.