Lesa Snider

In the past, I would look to the Adobe Classroom in a Book series for self paced ways to learn the parts of Adobe Creative Suite. Since I began using the Missing Manual series to quickly get up to speed with the newer versions, I’ve revised my opinion. While aimed at the more experienced user of any given product, Photoshop CS5: the Missing Manual is also very usable by the beginner and will take you further than the Adobe counterpart will.

I’ve been using Photoshop for a while, but I show more still consider myself a beginner with it as opposed to some other pieces of Creative Suite. I finally decided to get serious about learning this very complex tool. Having used other books in the Missing Manual series, I found the overall style appealing and decided to approach this book as if I knew nothing at all about Photoshop.

The instructions are very clear and the techniques discussed are very relevant. I do have a complaint about the lack of practice graphics. The manual says you may download the complete set of graphics used from their website. This may keep their production costs down by not having to include a disk with the book, but I did not find all of the sample graphics included in the download. I was inspired enough by the lessons, though, that I supplemented the lessons with photos and graphics from my own collection. If you are truly a beginner, you may not have this to fall back on. I am not counting this shortcoming too heavily against the book as I still found the lessons valuable.

Another reviewer commented about the book referencing other pages and felt this was a negative. I actually found this helpful: if I wanted more in depth material, I knew exactly where to turn for it. This goes back to the series premise of being the manual that should have come with the software as opposed to a linear teaching tool. You may follow the teaching in a linear fashion if you are a beginner or you skip ahead to areas you want more detailed instruction or related material on at your own discretion. I like options, so I found this very useful.

If you are switching to Photoshop CS5 from a previous version, this book is invaluable in getting you quickly up to speed and will make a fine reference tool for the software. If you are a beginner, the lessons will guide you through the intricacies of Photoshop, but don’t expect one book to make you a master creator. That will still take lots of practice and time. This book will start you down the path adequately prepared for however you intend to use Photoshop. show less

O'Reilly books and the 'Missing Manual' series have done a great job in making this Photoshop CC manual useful. The index is extensive and the page numbers in the index are hot links (at least in Adobe Reader). The index and chapter headings (and all chapter sub-divisions) are bookmarked so it is easy to navigate to the index or scan the chapters by name and navigate directly. I loaded the DRM free copy into dropbox and was able to easily read the manual on my Mac and MacBook with shared show more annotations. Reading on my iPad is clear but no shared annotations are available. The iPad Adobe Reader app worked fine with the book also using the 'Open With' feature of the reader. Four stars for O'Reilly in producing the manual for easy electronic viewing; who wants a paper manual that weighs more than my portable computer?

The content by Lesa Snider is readable and clear.I checked her descriptions of the features I use most often (e.g. image straightening, import and export), and felt that they were covered adequately. She did an especially good job outlining the new features of Photoshop CC and there is a full page note that explains the implications of Adobe's new rent-forever Photoshop. All in all, I think this manual is a useful addition to the pile of manuals already out for Photoshop CC, but the competition is fierce.
Carto show less

This is a HUGE book, especially for an ebook. It is well-written and has an exhaustive index which will serve those of us that have some familiarity with Photoshop, but really don't want to read the whole thing, but use it as a reference manual. The belly dancer graphic does draw one's interest into getting deeper into Photoshop.
I keep it handy and make great use of the Adobe "Find" feature.

Photoshop CC, the Missing Manual is the latest in a series of Photoshop Missing Manual books from O'Reilly. Like its predecessors, it contains some updated information specific to the current edition of Photoshop (the so-called Creative Cloud edition), as well as a ton of information relevant to recent editions (CS6, CS5, ...) of Photoshop. The Photoshop software does have a help function, which is useful if you just want to check a detail about using Photoshop, but if you want to learn show more Photoshop, or if you need a comprehensive reference, you need a book, and this book is one of the best. Highly recommended! show less