digital photography

I think the book may have tried to cover too much material, which turned it into a more of a manual, rather than a beginner's guide.

As a new user of Photoshop Elements, I would like to see more practical examples of how to use the software, such as retouching photos. The book gets too involved in describing each of the features, which would be more helpful for an advanced user.

The book could use more color photos, like before and after photos that visibly show the effects of the software tools. There are some color plates inserted in the middle of the book, but the text does not cross-reference them. One figure in the text is captioned "The black-and-white channels combine to make a full-color image." I am looking at a black and white photo wondering "Where's the color?" Half hour later I saw the color image is a color plate section, but there was no reference to it in the caption or chapter text.

The author often describes how to use a tool, only to follow with 'don't recommend it for this purpose', 'there's another way'. Don't waste time in a beginner book, if the tool is not that great or doesn't produce the expected results. Or maybe the product just isn't that great.

The author did get a bit goofy with the jokes.

This book has some good basics in it, but they are not well illustrated or explained . Much time is spent showing how you can alter images with odd colors or other relatively useless things. The practical information here could have been said in one-quarter the pages. Most of us want to use this ap to make our basic pictures better and to retouch old family photos. You have to dig pretty hard to find that information.

The jokes and smart remarks are not very funny, and you get tired of wading through them to find what you are after. After 20 pages of this, you want the authors to just get to the point.

I found this to be a good beginner's book. It covers a great deal of basic detail on colors, saving documents in different formats and polishing up photos. It provides a good mix of theory and practicality. My major criticism is that the author's attempts at humor were trite and excessive. Too much space was devoted to feeble attempts at humor instead of more solid information on filters, layers and tools.