I happen to know that the authors were pressured or felt pressured to publish quickly; hence, there is little discussion on the important, exciting new features of the CS version of photoshop. Pity, as the authors book on Photoshop 7 was excellent. They are capable of doing good work, but did not this time. Skip this book until it is revised.
If you dont already own a copy, this book does have some useful tips and strategies for improving your Photoshop skills and workflows. But there is *very* little new material relative to the last edition... and that one was only moderately updated in its own right. The only photography-focused authors who seem to consistently provide some heft to their updated Photoshop books are Martin Evening and Katrin Eismann. Scott Kelby also does well in this regard but most of his books tend to be "mile wide, inch deep" type works. Not that they arent useful in their own right, but they are not comprehensive in explaining tools or workflow.
As a Photoshop newbie this book is a clear winner. The coverage of the software is comprehensive; it makes excellent use of color illustrations (surprisingly many dont) and the exercises are well chosen. First of all this is not a PS cookbook. Cookbooks have their place and can be excellent resources. This book has a nice balance of discussion, whats what in PS and some exercises. There are numerous small examples about how to use Levels, Curves etc, but the serious exercises dont start until chapter 18. As I said... comprehensive and well balanced. Heartily recommended! Why not 5 stars? The book need some serious editing. There is too much carried along about how things were done in previous versions, what features were added when, etc. Get rid of it. This is a CS book, not a history of PS. Use the extra space for better layout and bigger fonts. The pages are so crowded for space as to be hard to read. Margins are used for the numerous screen shots, but when a page has none, fill the white space. These are editing criticisms and should not deter the reader from buying the book!
