Photoshop 6 Photo-Retouching Secrets

Photo Retouching Secrets is not another color correction book, or scanning manual. It covers only one topic: retouching images to make them look better. What type of retouching are we talking about? Thing like:

• tricks for removing red eye and then recoloring the eye to its natural color
• tricks for removing the signs of aging
• how to fix underexposed or overexposed images
• how to remove spots, rips, and tears

In Photo Retouching Secrets you will also learn:

• how to seamlessly splice images together
• repair damaged body parts
• remove unslightly shadows
• fix some of the other problems that digital cameras can often introduce to photos

Photo Retouching Secrets shows you feathering tricks, cropping and straightening tricks to save you time and frustration. If you want nothing but the tips, the tricks, and the secret inside shortcuts to make retouching images easy and fun, this book is the right one.

Everything good I said about the other book is true of this one as well. The instructions are easy to follow. He gives the keyboard commands for both Mac and PC. You can dip in anywhere so you can fix the photo you own without reading any earlier chapter, although in this book it might be useful to read the ones just before and just after the chapter you need for additional useful information. And, if you can follow the pictures, you CAN be successful.

I only give this book a 4 star rating because it is a Photoshop 6 book. Everything will work in Photoshop 7, and I haven't seen any major differences in the two versions of the program that will require figuring out work arounds for the instructions in the book. But, of course, anything that is new in Photoshop 7 is not covered in this book


...Garbage   April 8, 2003
 2 out of 8 found this review helpful

This book's production is embarrassing, especially for someone like Scott...the president of NAPP. The pictures in the book have all look pretty bad. The colors of the photo's are all reddish and look awful. This may not be all Scott's fault, it could have a lot to do with the printer they used to publish the book, but Scott should have proofed the himself. Either that or Scott does not know anything about color correction and color management. This book is also out of date. If you have Photoshop seven, this book is not for you. A much better book is Scott's new book "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers." Instead of Scott relying on his own knowledge, he went and sought out the pro's advice and concentrated it into his new book. His new book is really good. Don't bother with this out dated mess. Go out and get his new book.


Pages fell off!   December 31, 2002
 3 out of 6 found this review helpful

I have only started reading this book, but already the pages 1 to 30 have come apart! And I handle books very carefully, so I am not to blame.

Other reviewers have reviewed the content of this book, so I will not add to that. Except to say that it is dated now, as PS 7 has come out. Instead I recommend that you not buy this book because of the bad binding.


Great easy techniques   November 21, 2002
 3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Really liked this book. It has lots of elements that users need: Red Eye reduction (long ways and shortcuts), creating better photographs, lightening, darkening, colorizing.

I thought I was good at Photoshop, but he really showed me more focusing on digital photography. Very helpful indeed. And I will always have this book by my PC and digital camera (Canon A40)


Update on my previous review   July 17, 2002
 4 out of 4 found this review helpful

Earlier, I expressed my review of this excellent book with comments about the binding. Publisher New Riders are paying attention. They contacted me, replaced the book in a most gracious manner. The binding in the replacement is industry standard in all respects, as are those of other New Rider books I own. I would now give this book 6 stars were it permitted. It is gratifying to find a publisher as good as their authors.