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Recommend some CS2 books!

B

BoyBach

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Feb 24, 2006
3,031
13
Hi, I've been using Photoshop Elements for Windows to do some basic 'tidying-up' of images in work for a while, and I've now bought Adobe CS2 Standard for my Mac to use at home, but I'm not very good at it!!

Can you recommend some good books for learning the basics of Photoshop and Illustrator?

Thanks, Andrew
 
HD303 said:
I highly recommend "The Photoshop CS2 Book For Digital Photographers"

http://shop.scottkelbybooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=4&zenid=f73115a644a187daf5d530f50426c825

This is by far the best CS2 Book on the market - trust me on this one!!!
Click to expand...
I am actually going to start out on that book. I have done Adobe press's Classroom book (twice to be thorough) along with other books. I am reading Photoshop Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann to get more in-depth understanding and skills/techniques for those features of Photoshop. There are so many books on Photoshop and I have enjoyed learning this great program on my own pace with those tutorial books with the practice files.
 
Kelby writes his manuals so that people like me can get from point A to point B. He also writes in a humerous tone that explains the end goal perfectly.

There are many manuals out there that - for me - left me hanging and wondering what the next move would be in order to accomplish a goal. Plus they are so dry and boring.

Perhaps Kelby's guide along with all the other manuals we seem to buy will provide you with enough direction that you'll become proficient with CS2. Then again, I find out that after working with CS2 for a while I can pretty much handle photo manipulation like a pro. Then I go on hiatus for a month, come back and it's like i never used CS2 before in my life.
Good luck.
 
i'd just recommend practice, i learnt all my PS skills from playing around with PS 6 on my G4 cube learning the exact function of every tool and how all the transformations work, i'm not a big fan of filters though if your just retouching photos then maybe aperture or lightroom would be a better idea.

some day we should have a competition with a bunch of photos at the top asking to make "an elephant standing on it's head spinning a beach ball while riding a bicycle" only using original material.
 
Hector said:
i'd just recommend practice, i learnt all my PS skills from playing around with PS 6 on my G4 cube learning the exact function of every tool and how all the transformations work, i'm not a big fan of filters though if your just retouching photos then maybe aperture or lightroom would be a better idea.

some day we should have a competition with a bunch of photos at the top asking to make "an elephant standing on it's head spinning a beach ball while riding a bicycle" only using original material.
Click to expand...

It really depends on what type of retouching he does. Retouching doesn't just mean tweaking photos a little bit. It can mean a variety of things.
 
Real World Illustrator !

Take first a look at http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/

It will help you to evaluate the book of Mordy Golding book over CS 2 before to buy it : this site is for everything Illustrator and the book "Real World Adobe Illustrator CS2". Learn new stuff and have fun in the process

Mordy Golding, the author, is consultant and was at the head of the Adobe development team for Illustrator 10.

She participates too to another good way to learn about Adobe Illustrator and other CS2 products : to follow seminars like Adobe Creative Suite Seminar tour (http://www.adobeuser.com/)


Enjoy your life with Adobe Illustrator

Philippe JACQUES
The author of the NCS MagiSign plug-in (http://www.magisign.com)
 
wmmk said:
if you're really a beginner, try the Visual QuickStart and Visual QuickProject books.
Click to expand...

Actually it comes in handy even if you are fairly used to the software. Every once in a while I would run into some effect in Illustrator or Photoshop I use occasionally at best. The Quickstart books are great quickie reference books.
 
Thanks for the recommendations, I'm now doing some shopping on Amazon :D
 
I'll thid the quality of the CS2 classroom in a book. Got Photoshop, Indesign and Illustrator and all three are excellant. Amazon have them cheap too.
 
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