Browsing Books

[Wendy]

I have just spent an hour or two in Borders browsing books ... and it felt like being a child in a sweet shop. I started off with a large piece of paper and a wish list ... the idea was that I would look through the books and shorten my wish list as I browsed ....

It didn't work ... All that happened was I added a couple more to it.

I still can't decide ... So I wondered which books does everyone else have and what do they think of them?


Wendy

[Wayne Dreier]

Wendy,

I have a lot of Winnie the Pooh books, several bibles .... Oh, you probably mean what PSE books I have. Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

Besides the User Guide that came with PSE2 I purchased Photoshop Elements 2 Solutions by Mikkel Aaland. Now that I'm considering upgrading to PSE3 I bought Scott Kelby's The Photoshop Elements 3 Book For Digital Photographers.

Mikkel Aaland has updated his book for PSE3 but I thought I'd get a different viewpoint so I bought Scott's book. It is good but I regret now that I just did not get it from our local library. The way I learn it is not that useful. His approach is one of giving you the steps needed to solve a particular problem and the steps indeed work. But for me, I need to understand when told to adjust the threshold slider, what and why am I doing that. So many times I run into situations where the image I'm trying to adjust appears to be an ideal candidate for the step by step approach but when I finish it actually looks worse than when I started. But worse than that, I have no clue as to how I should make the settings because Scott's book does not (for me at least) explain what each of the adjustments do and even more importantly how they interact with each other.

I just found that again, for me, Mikkel Aaland's book is best for the way I need to learn. He will mention alternate tools one can use and goes into some detail explaining why the user may wish to choose one over the other. Frequently, he adds cautions about adjusting things to far and the result of doing so. That way, if I come up with such a result, I can easily go back and refine the one adjustment that is most likely causing my problem.

Hope this helps in some way.

[Wendy]

Hi Wayne,

Its nice to start off on a smile ... I never did have Winnie the Pooh maybe I should add it to my wish list

Thank you ... it is interesting to get someone elses views on books. I think the probem comes when you have had PSE2 for a while and bought a few books for it ... now you move on to another version and its difficult to know what to do. It somehow seems a waste to buy an update of a book you already have, I did that a while back and was really disappointing. The thing I don't like is when an Author tells you do do a shortcut but doesn't explain what it actually is ... I came across this yesterday and it took me ages to find out what it was doing. I had to wade through all the shortcuts ... and eventually found it near the bottom of the list.

Borders was full of new books but after a time I started to get confused about which one to buy (somewhere about the 10th book I finally gave up!!). I think that I will wait a few days then try again.

Anyway thank you so much for your input ... I do appreciate it.

Wendy

[Kathy]

Hi Wendy.

I purchased Scott Kelby's book and I really like it. Of course, I am the type of person who likes to jump right in, explore around, click and see what it does. That's what they made "undo" for isn't it? :lol:

I also have Photoshop Elements 3 for Windows & MacIntosh by Craig Hoeschen which I really like also. A Visual Guide type book also, but with a little more in-depth explanations. It covers topics not covered in depth in Scott Kelby's book .... layers, filters, painting and drawing and even working with type .... yet also easy to understand.

Of course, I like Scott's book because it makes you giggle and how many computer manuals can do that?

Kathy

[Wendy]

hi Kathy,

Have to admit that I tend to use undo quite a lot ...

I do know what you mean about Scot Kelby's style of writing, I have another of his books and he does come out with the funniest things. I will check out the Craig Hoeschen book .. I donlt think that I saw that yesterday.

Will let you know how I go on

Wendy

[Mary]

I have to admit that I am a book junkie - I think I have most of the books already mentioned - but I have found that when I mix in a bit of CBT (Computer Based Training) from CD or DVD and the videos on this site, everything becomes much clearer for me.

I have invested in the Total Training (Deke McLellan) sp? CD's for PSE and Linda Sattgast's DVD for scrapbooking with PSE.

The combination of the two learning modalities have proven to be very complimentary for my learning style.

[Wendy]

Mary,

I too am a book junkie ... trouble is it all sorts of books so the house tends to overflow. With Photoshop I decided not to buy too many and I also decided not to go for the simple ones but to go for ones that I could "grow into". The trouble is the more I see ... the more I want .

I do like the idea of something on scrapbooking that seems to give another dimension to my existing books and DVD's. The tutorials on this site by Linda Sattgast's are really good and I picked up some excellent tips from them.

I can see what is going to happen ... my buy two books is going to turn into three books and a DVD .

Wendy