Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release) Review In Few Words (Mini Review)
Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book is one of the most popular Photoshop books, and a good book to learn how to use Photoshop in general. It explains a good amount of Photoshop features, and it contains a lot of hand-on tutorials to apply many of these.
In case you plan to use Photoshop for Photography or something else, like digital painting, I suggest you get yourself a book that’s dedicated for that in additional to this one. In case you are interested in learning Photoshop CC basics in a good depth, check out my book Learn Photoshop CC With Pictures, which I wrote with the Photoshop beginner in mind, as it takes a deep look at the most important Photoshop features you need to use.
Pros of Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release)
- Part of the official training materials from Adobe.
- One of the most popular Photoshop books.
- Contains many interesting projects, which will provide you with a good on-hand experience.
- Contains a nice appendix at the end of the book, which covers Tools Panel Overview with pictures.
- Covers new Photoshop CC 2014 features, including Generator, 3D printing, linked Smart Objects, Blur Gallery, smarter Smart Guides, Perspective Warp, and more.
Cons of Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release)
- The book doesn’t explain how to apply some of the the tools in-depth.
The book is more suitable for
- Beginners who wants to get to know Photoshop.
Photoshop is a huge program, and it is totally inefficient to learn it without the help of a book, tutorial or a course to help you around. At least at the beginning of learning how to use the program. And that’s where Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book comes, which is part of the official training materials from Adobe. If you looked at the book cover, you will even see that contains the photo in the splash screen that you see when you run Photoshop CC.
Generally speaking, Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book is a good book to learn Photoshop and get started with it. It won’t make you master everything in the program with it, but it will teach you a good amount of things. The chapters cover a wide area of Photoshop, like basic photo correction & layers basics.
Some of the other chapters give you a good overview on various subjects which you may not use, but it is good to know that these features exist just in case.
The book will start by introducing you to Photoshop user interface, which is good to know how to arrange it to suit your own need, though I personally prefer teaching some few things to the reader to motivate him, it is very common for books to start with the user interface like that.
Then the book goes from introductions and user interface to the real work in the upcoming new chapters, some of these chapters in the book are very interesting, I personally liked two chapters in it. The advanced Composing techniques chapter help you creating cover pictures by composing pictures on the top of each other. The other chapter I liked was the one covering the mixer brush, which is one good way to paint with Phtosohop, which you will find useful if you plan to use Photoshop for paining.
You are very likely chapter 5, named “Quick Fixes”, which covers the most common tasks people want to do with Photoshop. Like creating panorama. Correcting redeye problem, correcting distortion in images, moving objects inside the image, and blurring the background of an image, so that the focus is one the main object in it.
At the beginning of each chapter, Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book shows you an estimate of how each lesson will take you. But there is a good chance it will take you more than what they specified to finsh the chapter. This is particularly the case if you are very new to Photoshop. Each chapter ends with review questions, to help you test what you have learned.
The last few chapters in the book gives you a good introduction of various features of Photoshop, but bear in mind that these features are not fully covered in it.
Editing video, which can be useful if you plan to use Photoshop with Adobe premiere.
- Camera Raw, which I will talk about shortly.
- Printing images to produce consistent colours on paper compared to the screen.
- A little overview on 3D in Phtoshop.
- 3D printing, which is usefull in case you have a 3D printer or plan to get one. Most people won’t use the things covered in this chapter for now, but it is very interesting to know about this new technology, and how Photoshop covers it.
- Preparing files for the web, including compressing images the right way. Creatine a button for a website. Record an action, which is a way to record something you do, only to make Photoshop do it again for you, which is a good way to save time if used correctly, and use an action on multiple images to save time.
The projects in Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release)will give you a good hand-on experience, which you will need to start your own practicing after you finish reading this book (which is pretty fun, by the way). Some of the things you will do in the projects:-
- Creating a gift card.
- Correcting Photos.
- Using layers to create a simple Hawaii postcard.
- Creating panorama pictures.
- Raising the head of a man using the puppet wrap features, and making wave words come out of his mouth. All that is done as part of creating a cover of an imaginary magazine called “Digital”.
- Create vector cup by tracing an image of a real cup.
Camera Raw Chapter
As I mentioned above, Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book contains a dedicated Camera Raw chapter, an important tool used to prepare RAW files, which are a type of files produced by digital cameras, in order to edit them in Photohsop. This is both useful in case you plan to use Photohsop in photography, or to do edit some of the photos you take yourself with your own camera.
Covers new Photoshop CC 2014 features.
Besides everything I mentioned, Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book covers new Photoshop CC 2014 features, including Generator, 3D printing, linked Smart Objects, Blur Gallery, smarter Smart Guides, Perspective Warp, and more.
Tools Panel Overview
One of the things I liked about this book, is that at the end of the book, the book contains a nice appendix with Tools Panel Overview, with picture, with make it very easy to review the use of the main Photoshop tools you learned throughout the book.
The Lesson Files
The hard version of this Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release) no longer come withs CD, you will have to download the lesson files from www.peachpit.com/redeem. There is a code in red that you will have to enter to get your files, and you need to create an online account to download the lesson files.
And Finally
Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release) is a generic book, in that it doesn’t focus on a certain type of Photoshop users. If you want to learn Photoshop in general go for it. If you use photoshop for photography or digital painting, I suggest you get a dedicated book just for that.
You may also be interested in checking out my book Learn Photoshop CC With Pictures, which I wrote with the Photoshop beginner in mind, as it takes a deep look at the most important Photoshop features you need to use.
Information About Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book.
Authors Names:- Andrew Faulkner, Brie Gyncild.
Paperback Pages Count:- 384 pages.
Chapters List
- Chapter 1 – Getting to Know the Work Area.
- Chapter 2 – Basic Photo Corrections.
- Chapter 3 – Working With Selections.
- Chapter 4 – Layer Basics.
- Chapter 5 – Quick Fixes.
- Chapter 6 – Masks and Channels.
- Chapter 7 – Typographic Design.
- Chapter 8 – Vector Drawing Techniques.
- Chapter 9 – Advanced Compositing.
- Chapter 10 – Painting with The Mixer Brush.
- Chapter 11 – Editing Video.
- Chapter 12 – Working with Camera Raw.
- Chapter 13 – Preparing Files for the Web.
- Chapter 14 – Producing and Printing Consistent Color.
Buy Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book (2014 release) From Amazon.
