Adobe Photoshop CS5 Revealed (Adobe Creative Suite)

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Revealed is the required textbook for a class I am currently enrolled in. The book is newly released and wasn't available at the college book store. This is where Amazon pre-order comes in handy.The good: Step by step instructions that someone with NO prior experience with Adobe can follow and actually comprehend! Graphics and screen shots are appropriate, seem to be accurate, and are interesting. Contents are in a layout that is simple and makes for an easy reference guide. PS Lingo is in bold and colored type.I like the sidebars and the design projects. Revealed is set up in a manner that pretty much assures student success. That's good! This is a solid and thoughtful textbook that I'm glad I bought.I also have AQUENT Digital Classroom Photoshop CS4. To compare the two - Revealed CS5 has a sequential format that makes sense to the novice. Revealed also includes content on the new mini bridge and extended content with painting techniques. The size and "cut" of Revealed allow it to lay open on the desk, where Aquent is bulky and hard to manage. A spiral ring binding would be even better. Step by Step instructions in Revealed are on colored side bands with bold headings - Step by Steps are somewhat buried in white space in the Aquent.The bad: Revealed PS CS5 may be too simple for someone with PS experience. I don't see a lot of WOW in here, but the lessons seem strong in the basics with enough fun to keep it interesting. I'm pretty confident I will be able to produce something on my own once I'm through with the lessons and projects. (I've been going through the lessons using my own photos - see below)The ugly: The content CD was broken. The content CD in the replacement was broken. Hopefully 3rd time is a charm. Amazon has one-day shipped the replacements and customer service was a breeze, but really...this is unacceptable. As to the ADVENT CS4 book, THAT CD was also broken and I had to go through the publisher for a replacement.Hey Amazon - figure out how to "tag" these books with content cd's, so the warehouse knows how pack it properly for shipping!

I'm not sure why Ms. Reding thinks she can write a text, but my experience with PS CS5 Revealed demonstrates that she can not. Furthermore, the entire "Revealed" series is nothing but advertising pap for Adobe. I purchased this book because I was forced too. It seems that the publisher has a nice little business selling complete online courses to various "virtual colleges" and part of the price of the course is the requirement to use their books. (Oh and as an aside, apparently no one at "Delmar Cengage Learning" has heard that the majority of creative professionals use Macs.)Ms. Reding makes grammatical, syntactic, and factual errors in virtually ever lesson. Also, in all but the first couple of chapters, she is constantly pushing Adobe's online and add on services when they have nothing to do with a new user mastering the subject matter. The choice of topics seems random. Movement within chapters is choppy. The editor/writer repeatedly puts examples on pages not associated with the text. It's clear that no one in this operation knows a thing about learning. Repeatedly in the exercises there are mistakes in sequence or error in the instructions. She will also describe a project or activity and then in the step by step instructions contradict herself. It is so bad that my course "instructor" in her syllabus and lesson notes has to point out errors so she isn't inundated with questions.Additionally, every example, exercise, and project is just plain ugly. I guess the publisher is just so cheap that they take garbage work and make it look uglier to demonstrate the effects of the tool under discussion. Finally, what was to me the most amazing, is that the actual art of working with photographs gets part of one lesson for a total of 9 pages out of well over 300. Adobe Camera Raw - a critical program for any photographer - gets 5 of those pages mostly on how to change its settings.I'm glad Ms. Reding is making a living, but bluntly I think she is doing it by defrauding innocent buyers. This is among the worst computer "texts" I've ever encountered and I've been using such books since the early '80s.Be warned.

I bought this text for an online class. After covering nine chapters (over half the book), I've found that the lessons are skimpy on detail and usually force the user to follow the author's step-by-step paths with little or no explanation of what is being accomplished. While she does touch on many basic functions, many sidebars discuss features or functions that have nothing to do with the chapter focus. Of course, being a textbook for an online class, I don't have the luxury of filling in the blanks by talking with an instructor.But what bothers me the most are the lesson exercises. They don't reinforce the chapter lessons, because the author doesn't tell you to use any chapter-specific learned processes in most exercises; worse for students without a lot of time to spend, the author makes YOU come up with the concept, find your own artwork, and try to do all the vaguely-outlined steps to complete them. I've used Photoshop for over 10 years, yet I still have to spend 2-4 hours per exercise to complete these projects for my grade. I did not plan to devote 25+ hours a week to brushing up on my Photoshop skills!Unless you must use this textbook for a class, skip it and buy something with more background and less guesswork, like Deke McLelland's fine Photoshop books or even Adobe's Classroom In A Book series.