Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3
by Scott Kelby
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Book Summary Information
Author: Scott KelbyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-26
ISBN: 0321501926
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Accessories:
- Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide
- Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature
- The Digital Photography Book, Volume 2
- The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers
Book Reviews of Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3
Book Review: Misses Some Basic Teaching Opportunities
Summary: 3 Stars
Kelby's 7-point system for using PhotoShop is highly touted, but I haven't found the book as well written and helpful as I expected. Despite this man's reputed teaching skills, there are many things a teacher should do that are missing in this book. It certainly isn't a book for beginners to PS. He assumes you know a lot and often uses the PS lingo and if you don't know it, you have to figure it out for yourself because he leaves much of it unexplained. It also appears as if he wrote much of the book from his memory as to how to do these procedures, rather than going back and running through them in PS and making notes about names and places. I'll give some examples below from chapter 1.
The most amazing thing to me is that this entire book is just about built on the Camera Raw add-on to PhotoShop, but our author doesn't tell you how to find and open Camera Raw! How essential is that? I had to go into PS and find a default to open all JPEGs in Camera Raw. I still don't know how to find it without that.
Lesson 1: The lesson doesn't have a title but the example picture is dark, monochromatic, and without detail. So my assumption is that the purpose of this lesson is correct those problems. You would think a teacher would mention that, even put it in the title! Here are some problems I encountered in trying to do lesson 1.
He starts with the basic screen in Camera Raw and adjusts three things: White Balance, Exposure, and Black. He doesn't explain very many "whys" and a bit of explanation here would have been helpful. For example, why does he set the temperature at 7100? Why doesn't he adjust the tint of the picture? Most interesting to me is, there must be a reason for setting the exposure at +1.30, but he doesn't explain why the picture has to look nearly washed out before proceeding. So, by this time, I'm just doing things because he says so, without understanding very much about why? He does tell me that increasing the black will bring back the saturation and density enough to fix the image, but I don't know whether his 39 setting is good for every picture or just this one.
Now he takes us to PS proper to use its "Curves" feature for more improvements. At this point, if you are a beginner, things are confusing, because, I learned by trial and error, that there are two ways to get at layers. There is a layer drop down menu on the top bar, but there is also a layer panel on the right side of the screen. It isn't always clear from his writing which one he is referring to, and they do some different things, so it is essential to know. This sentence is an example: "Once the photo is open in Photoshop, click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Curves from the pop-up menu." (Beginning of step 5, p. 4) Well, I didn't know the Layers Panel was on the right side of the screen, and had little icons at the bottom. Another sentence and a slide of the panel would have cleared this up. This is what I mean by a teacher who misses essential elements, at least for the beginner. I went to the layers menu at the top to do these things and was confused by his reference to icons. I was about one-fourth the way through the lesson before I finally discovered the Layer panel on the right side, and half-way through the lesson, before I discovered the icons at the bottom. Call me slow, I admit it. But a paragraph and a slide of the Layer panel would have saved me frustration and almost giving up in the middle of the first lesson. I discovered many things by both trial and error. I'm not a lazy student, but I felt some anger at having to resort to trial and error unnecessarily.
I mentioned that he used different names than I sometimes found in PS. An example is in reference to the eyedroppers in the Curves dialog box. He said they had to do with shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. But when you place your cursor on the eyedropper it talks about black, grey, and white. I figured out that was what he was referring to as shadows and highlights, but I wondered why he didn't use the terms used in PS and then explain what I just did. Another oversight a good teacher wouldn't make. He has you put numbers in each of the colors for R, G, and B, but doesn't explain why. They are saved and have now become the default, but I don't know why those numbers were picked or what they represent.
The most difficult part of this lesson for me was a little side trip he has you take to learn how to find the brightest spot on a photo if it is so monochromatic it is hard to tell. He has readers create a new layer with the Threshold option in the Layer menu. I won't go into detail here, but when you are done with this he says "then drag this adjustment layer into the trash (at the bottom right of the Layers panel) to delete it." I still hadn't sorted out the difference between the Layers menu at the top and the Panel on the right so had a hard time finding the trash. I expected it to be at the bottom of the entire screen. After several aborted efforts with this I finally figured it out. But I wondered why he simply didn't have the reader "cancel" the Threshold operation and achieve the same result, without the frustration. By clicking the eyedropper on the shadows and highlights he said this made them "neutral" and I have no idea what that means or why it is important, but it must be important in PS.
In order to correct shadows further he then introduces the reader to the Shadow/Highlight feature of PS. Luckily, I have had some experience with this, so this was easier for me to follow, but not entirely without problems. The background color was changed to white and then to black, without a word of explanation as to why? So, I lamely follow a process without understanding why I am doing it!
In step 13 he says we are to click on the "layer mask thumbnail" in the Layers panel. I didn't know what to expect when I clicked on it-whether an image would come up or what. As it turned out, nothing happened visually on the screen. I finally figured out this was a necessary step before converting to black, but I don't know why.
In step 15, he instructs the reader to click on the "gradient thumbnail" in the dialog and that will bring up the Gradient Editor. I think of a thumbnail as an image, so I expected the image I was working on to be in a gradient box. No such luck, so now what do I do? If he would have simply said double click on the gradient bar, that will bring up the Editor it would have been much simpler. I searched high and low in both the menu and the panel for a thumbnail, and clicked on the boxes where there were or should have been thumbnails. Nothing. After the lesson, while trying it out on one of my own pictures, I tried clicking on the gradient and behold up came the Editor. And it was just like the one in his book. The one I found in the menu was different, but I suppose it did the same thing. I don't really know.
The layers needed to be blended, and for some inexplicable reason, among the options, I was told to select Soft Light. It worked, but I don't know why. At this point I might make the observation that the labels PS uses aren't exactly intuitive to the new user. Maybe after 5 years of experience with the product I will understand why "luminosity" is the choice when fading curves, shadow/highlight, and the like. I would never have guessed it on my own or figured it out rationally. Without help books, these things are unfathomable!
It was fun to set up what I would call a "macro" to repeat the sharpening process, but I don't know why he selected 85% as the medium sharpening 120% for the High and 100% for the Low level of sharpening! Shouldn't 100% be in the middle? But he did have us change one other number in the Low option, which I suspect made it lower than the other two, but there was no explanation as to why or what it accomplished.
Well, I am a retired teacher, and so I expected a little better job of anticipating and answering such basic questions. Mr. Kelby gets a C grade as a teacher.
Still, I'm glad I have the book, and I will study each lesson and learn much, but I don't look forward to the frustrations I experienced in the first lesson. Knowing is part of conquering, so forewarned, I can now make better use of a product that could have been even better than its fans have led us to believe.
Summary of Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3
Scott Kelby, the world's #1 bestselling Photoshop author, and the man who changed the Photoshop and digital photography world with his ground-breaking, award-winning "Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" unveils a exciting, brand new way of thinking, and working in Adobe Photoshop that will not only change the industry again, but it will change the way we all work in Photoshop forever, so we can finally spend less time fixing our images, and more time finishing them.You're about to become a Photoshop Shark!
Scott has focused in and really narrowed things down to just exactly which Photoshop tools and techniques we absolutely, positively have to know, and he found that there are just seven major tools, seven major features that we have to master to enhance our images like a pro. But then he took it a step further. Out of those seven major tools, he looked at which parts or sections of those tools do we really need to master, and which parts can we pretty much ignore (in other words, he whittled it down so you're not learning parts of the tools that you're probably never going to need). Then, and perhaps most importantly, he determined exactly when and in which order to apply these seven techniques that make up Scott's amazing "Photoshop Seven Point System."
But the magic of this book, is not just listing the seven tools and showing how they work. It's how they're used together, and how Scott teaches them (and makes it stick), that makes this book so unique. You're not going to just learn one technique for fixing shadows, and another technique for adjusting color (every Photoshop book pretty much does that, right?). Instead, you're going start off at square one, from scratch, as each chapter is just one photo?one project?one challenging lifeless image (you'll follow along using his the same images), and you're going to unleash these seven tools, in a very specific way, and you're going to do it again, and again, and again, in order on different photos, in different situations, until they are absolutely second nature. You're finally going to do the FULL fix?from beginning to end?with nothing left out, and once you learn these seven very specific techniques, and apply them in order, there won't be a an image that appears on your screen that you won't be able to enhance, fix, edit, and finish yourself!
Plus, Scott's techniques work across a wide range of photos, and that's exactly what you'll be working on in the book, from landscapes to portraits, to architectural, to nature, from event photography to everything in between?there isn't a photo you won't be able to beat!
This is the book you've been waiting for, the industry's been waiting for, and Scott's "Adobe Photoshop Seven Point System" is so revolutionary that he's officially applied for a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and this new system is only found in this amazing, ground breaking new book. Once you learn these techniques, and start applying them yourself, you'll be the next one to say?"You can't beat 'The System!'
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