What Photoshop Books Should I Read? (UPDATED: Jan 30, 2014)

One of my top blog posts was my article entitled "Which Books Should I Read?" lacked a detailed discussion about Photoshop books because of the time of its writing I was still getting up to speed on Photoshop. I've now had time to read a big stack of Photoshop books and have some concrete recommendations to go along with that article now.

If you are like me you find Photoshop to be both poorly laid out and daunting to learn. It's easy to buy a stack of books and never get anywhere beyond cropping then clicking Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color (and possibly Variations if you've discovered that one) and calling it a day. In essence you've spend a fortune on a product that doesn't really do much to help you with your photos. Fear not, you aren't alone!

Starting with the Basics

One of the problems with most Photoshop books is that they've forgotten that there are still people on this planet who don't know the fundamentals of Photoshop. If you don't know how to add or subtract from a selection or even what all of the selection tools do, then it will drive you insane when the book simply says "select the girl in the photo" who inevitably has wispy hair going everywhere!

If you are a Photoshop novice (and it is okay to admit that you are) then I highly recommend you start with Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop CC (My old CS3 version review). However, the important thing to remember when reading Photoshop books is that you MUST apply what you've read on the computer. If you simply read it and move on then you'll forget it, so practical application is essential.

Okay, I know the basics now just show me how to do cool stuff

Now there are a handful of really great Photoshop books, but there comes a point where you just want to get on with it and start doing some cool stuff. Once you see that you can do cool stuff yourself, then you have the motivation to read all of those other good Photoshop books. For this I've found that there is one definitive MUST READ Photoshop book for anyone who as ever wanted to create pro looking photos and its called Scott Kelby's 7 Point System for Photoshop CS3. Yep, that's right - it's the same Scott Kelby that wrote The Digital Photography Book - Volume 1 (2nd Edition) which is #1 on my list of recommended Photography books. While it may seem like I'm becoming a bit of a Kelby fan boy, the reality is that the guy just knows how to write great books in a way that gets down to business so you can get your work done. This book has helped me tremendously and I know it will do the same for you. Once again I'll repeat , the important thing to remember when reading Photoshop books is that you MUST apply what you've read on the computer and in this case you must also WORK WITH THE SAMPLE FILES!!!!

Just cut to the chase, what's your recommend reading list?

Okay, here in order of importance (always read #1 first) are the books I recommend you read if you want to master Photoshop:

1. Teach Yourself VISUALLY Photoshop CC  (see my Teach Yourself Visually Adobe Photoshop CS3 book review which still applies to newer editions)
2. Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Review) - no CS4 or CS5 version but it is still applicable and a MUST OWN book)
3. The Adobe Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers (or the version that applies to your installed version of Photoshop – here’s my last reviewed version)
4. The Photoshop Channels Book is the magic resource that will teach you how to create complex selections that you find impossible to do right now (WAY better than Photoshop Masking & Compositing)

But wait, 3 of those 4 books are Kelby books. What the heck?

Yes, it's true Scott Kelby writes some great books and I highly recommend them. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't other great books out there. In fact, there are. However, I've found that great books like Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace  don't appeal to the masses and quite simple are too advanced for someone reading an article like this. At some point I may do an advanced Photoshop book list, but for now I'm catering to those who are getting started and Kelby is the man right now.

Extra Reading Recommendations

If you’ve finished my recommended books and want more, then you’ve gotta try these:

• Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers using Photoshop – the bible for portrait editing
• Photoshop Compositing Secrets – If you ever need to do a composite, this will help you do one that looks natural and not like cheesy stickers on a photo
• Welcome to Oz 2 – Helpful for learning how to control the viewer’s eye / attention
• The Digital Negative – If you want more depth on RAW 
• Layers – Helps to understand blending modes & “blend if” feature (current version is better than the one I reviewed)

A word about Photoshop CS5

As of the time I wrote this article the selection of Adobe Photoshop CS5 books was getting better, but still some key books haven’t been updated for CS5. Photoshop CS5 has some drastic changes to its user-interface and performance improvements. In addition, most cameras released after June 2010 that create RAW image files can't be opened in Photoshop CS4 or Lightroom 2.x because the newer version of Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) is only integrated into Lightroom 3.x and Photoshop CS5 and up. If you can afford it, then it is a worthwhile upgrade, however you should always get the books for your specific version of Photoshop so look for CS4 updates to the books listed in this article.

What about Lightroom?

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers (my old review) is the bible for Lightroom and has stuff you won’t find anywhere on Adobe’s web site or manuals. I love it! It also includes an adaptation of the 7 Point System for Lightroom so it’s a great resource! If you want more depth, then check out The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers.

What about HDR?

This is one place where I say skip the book and go to the video and there’s nothing better out there than HDR Workshop DVD by Trey Ratcliff of StuckInCustoms.com. It’s a great resource that is easy to follow and worth every penny – especially for those who own Photomatix and don’t know how the hell to get good results out of it (which is where I was until watching this DVD series).Trey does have a book called A World in HDR which is a decent resource, but I got a lot more out of the DVD’s. However, the best place to go these days is flatbooks.com and search for Trey’s latest eBooks.

I want more info about Printing from Photoshop?

Printing is a whole beast in and of itself which is why I created my printing series and even my own Printing 101 eBook, but if you really want to get into printing then again I say watch The Perfect Print DVD Series by Randy Hufford first. It’s also useful to read The Digital Print if you want more depth than what my book offers.

But Ron, I REALLY hate reading books - what other choices do I have?

If you are the ADD type like me, it may be hard to focus long enough to finish a book unless you have a lot of uninterrupted time (I read many of my books when I was on bed rest due to back pain). Now that I'm back on my feet again, I'm finding it difficult to read books again. As a result, I've found my Kelby Training membership be a valuable resource due to the great detailed videos the have on their site that simply "get to the point" of the thing I'd like to do. I also like their magazine because it allows me to review short articles that solve specific common problems.

I struggle to find time to read books and magazines, how do you do it?

I have this problem too, but I've found a few things that work well for me. First, if I'm home sick I'll try to read for as long as I can before I eventually fall asleep (if your eyes get heavy then stop reading - its pointless). Next, is when I'm on the airplane (which isn't that often for me). Planes are a great place because it makes the flight go quicker. Next is anytime I find myself waiting. I keep my book or magazine handy with me when I go to appointments or I am waiting for my kids (it's great when they are playing on the McDonalds play structure that I'm too big to fit in). Lastly, and perhaps the funniest, is when I'm in the restroom at home. You laugh, but I've found that if you simply read a couple pages each time you are perched on your porcelain throne that you can finish a book in a month or less. In fact, it usually causes you to get so interested in a chapter that you follow up with it afterwards so you can at least finish a chapter. Sure this might gross some people out and make them think twice about borrowing a book from me, but it's the truth and it works. Try it out!

I also always try to pick long flights when I travel and take my books with me. It’s forced time that I can dedicate to reading, and often I can finish at least one book each way of my trip. Get the Kindle version of the books to do this without having to carry a bunch of extra weight, but personally still prefer the printed or PDF eBooks over Kindle books since you sometimes loose the integration of photos and text together.

Okay, what if I'm too lazy to do any of the things you've suggested - what now?

I understand where you are coming from. When I started with Photoshop I got so frustrated that I just decided to throw money at the problem and pick up some plug-ins. While these work very well and I use them frequently today, despite my strong Photoshop skills, the key thing to realize is that being strong in Photoshop will teach you how to get the most out of your plug-ins by being able to control their impact on your photo using things like masks. With that said, I do have some favorite plug-ins and I would recommend that you get them even if you become great in Photoshop. My recommend list can be found in my What Plug-Ins Should I Buy? article.

I also teach and do contract work, so contact me if you want to pay me to get you up to speed or edit a photo on your behalf.

These are expensive, do you have any discounts?

See the Discount Coupon Code page for the latest versions and discounts.

Other articles you may enjoy

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy these:

• ** My FAVORITE Lightroom Presets - Discount Code **
• B&W Software Editing Comparison - Nik vs onOne vs Topaz
• Choosing The Right Display Calibration Device
• HDR Software Comparison
• Photographers Gift Guide / Recommendations
• Things You Need AFTER You Buy Your New Camera - Must Have Photography Accessories
• What plug-ins should I buy? (for Photoshop & Lightroom)
• Where should I display and/or sell my pictures online? (Updated 2012)
• Which Photography books should I read?

Disclosure

If you make a purchase using links found in this article, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you a penny more, but it does help to support future articles like this.

REVIEW: Scott Kelby's 7 Point System for Photoshop CS3 (Updated: 11/25/2010)

When I got Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3, I hoped it would be the miracle book that would help rescue some of my blah pictures and turn them into masterpieces worthy of resale. Well the good news is that I do think this book helped to tie together some things I already knew into something that does indeed help me improve upon my pictures. Now I can take pictures that I would otherwise discard and rescue them from the recycle bin into something that is - uh, better!

See the thing that Scott Kelby, nor Bryan Peterson can do is give you artistic talent. I seem to be lacking that key element so I'm going to have to keep working on that one, and no amount of books is going to fix that one. What I can say is that this book REALLY helped me to rescue dull, blah photos so that I could make them look better (in my opinion, but perhaps not others). While I may be guilty of being a little to garish with my use of colors, I still feel like these shots are a big improvement over the blah originals.

Here's the shot after using Scott Kelby's 7 Point System and if you hover over it you will see the original of the Seattle skyline from Kerry Park as it came out of the camera:

While the color might be an acquired taste for some, I thought it was a huge improvement. I definitely liked what I as able to do to improve the Space Needle itself and how the mood changed from a drab looking evening (which it wasn't) to a more bright image while still leaving the blue sky in tact.

Here's another example of a shot that was taken by my co-worker Yvonne Johnson while she was on a recent trip to Dubai:

While she was proud of her capture of the neat look of the desert in Dubai, she was pretty frustrated by her lens fogging and dust in the air which ruined what she hoped would be a nice snap shot as a keepsake of her visit to the desert.

After seeing this shot I immediately wanted to try the 7 Point System on it and I got what I believe to be are significantly better results. While some may argue they are too "photoshopped", and fixing them brought out a vignetting problem with her lens, However, criticisms aside I think it is a significantly better improvement over the original.

What's the moral of the story here? While you may hate what I've done with these photos, I think if you have the artistic talent that I lack you can clearly see that you'll have to tools in your tool chest to do some exceptional photo recovery work. To see some additional examples, visit my colleague Mitchell Morris' blog entry on the same topic.

So What are the 7 Points?

Well Scott will drive you crazy trying to tell you what they are in the book, so I'm going to spare you. I'll just list them out at a high level and it is up to you to read the book to learn more:

1. Adobe Camera Raw Processing - start by turning your raw into something worthy of working on in Photoshop.
   
2. Curves Adjustments - A little demystification here, but this one is still a challenge for me.
   
3. Shadow/Highlight - Not one of the biggies like the others, but still comes in handy
   
4. Painting with Light - This is the magic bullet and it is basically the concept of a layer mask (see my revelation about the overlay mask in an early blog entry).
   
5. Channels Adjustments (aka LAB Color / Apply Image) - Here's another useful nugget that makes you ask yourself - how on Earth did Adobe ever expect me to figure this one out? (It turns out Scott and others learned about it directly from Adobe too).
   
6. Layer Blend Modes & Layer Masks - Similar to 4, but this takes it a step further and instead of using Smart Objects to lighten and darken the image he shows how to use cool tricks with layer blending (one of which is using gradients as a GND filter) to really do some cool things quickly.
   
7. Sharpening Techniques - Scott's other book, The Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers (and later) does a MUCH better job of explaining his wide arsenal of sharpening techniques, but this does provide some good basics skills along with showing you how to create a macro with shortcut keys so you can do this as a quick and final step.

These techniques aren't always used on every photo, but the fact is that most are and they work when you put the time and effort into a photo.

So how does it work?

Scott provides some unprocessed originals (most NEF raw images) that help show you he's a mere mortal and gets some really bad shots out of his camera too. He then gives you step by step lessons on what he does to fix them.

The first thing you notice about this book is that Lesson 1 has 30 steps. If you read Amazon's reviews or you talk to people like my girlfriend, you quickly see that turns them off to this book right away. However, this is where you have to be a language lawyer because Scott doesn't say seven STEPS, he says seven POINTS. A Point is a general rule / guideline, which can take several steps to accomplish.

By working on a wide variety of photos (some of which start off as JPEG) you are introduced to numerous challenges, so the lessons help to give you broad knowledge on how to deal with a wide variety of problems. The 20 lessons (plus the 1 refresher lesson) give you the repetition needed to do this on your own. As of this writing I'm on lesson 9, and I'm already applying a lot of these techniques to my photos by heart. In short, it really does work so I'm eager to finish he book! I've decided to write this review early because I want to share what I believe to be a great resource so that people can start taking advantage of it now. I hope you can join me by buying Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 and sharing your results on flickr.

In the end, I think this is a good complement to his "recipe" book called The Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers (or later), but not necessarily a complete replacement. I think if you only had to have one, this might be more instructive but The Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers (or later) is more helpful long-term. Either way, you'll want to make sure you read this book at least once and I highly recommend owning it.

Conclusion

Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced

Value: Excellent

Recommendation:
Highly recommended. While this is probably not suitable for beginners, once you know Photoshop basics you'll get A LOT out of this book. The Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Digital Photographers (or the respective edition for your version of Photoshop) is a good complement to this book and should be considered as a useful companion book to purchase when ordering.

This book is part of my What Photoshop Books Should I Read? article and is considered a must read as of 11/25/2010 (and probably well beyond).

REVIEW: Teach Yourself Visually Adobe Photoshop CS3

Background

Years ago during the Windows 3.0 days I was a computer whiz and would digest a computer programming book a day, so learning a software program was something I could do without even picking up a book. When art programs like ULead Photostyler, Corel Draw, Paintshop Pro, etc.. came out, I quickly took to them and mastered them with little effort or attention to the manuals (and they actually came with very good printed manuals back then).

When I went off to work for a big high-tech company in 1994 I didn't have time to keep on everything that came out, so I stopped paying attention to art programs. By the time I started caring again, I decided to get what I was told was the best program out there at time time - Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1. About a month after getting this product I finally started to play with it and discovered there was a 6.0.2 version, but Adobe wanted some serious money (at least I thought so at the time) to upgrade (for a point release!!!) so I immediately had a bitter taste in my mouth for Adobe products.

As someone who had been using DOS for years in my earlier career, and who had owned a Apple Macintosh IIci, I enjoyed the ease of use a graphical interface application in Windows offered so my expectation is that a graphical user-interface should be developed so that everything is discoverable without any special keystroke combinations or need to go to the manuals. Discoverability is key above everything, so when I first played with Adobe Photoshop my first thought was "what a piece of crap". This thing was the most unintuitive, hard to use, piece of garbage I had ever seen! And that is saying a lot because at one point in 1991 I actually owned every piece of mainstream commercial software that was available for Windows 3.0, so I had used quite a bit of software (some of which was pretty bad).

I thought, this is what every one is raving about? What the hell? However, I was determined to understand what the hype was about, so I read the manual (they actually had one those days, but it sucked worse than the UI). That was a waste of time, and ultimately I never learned a hell of a lot. I also had learned that my beloved Ulead Photostyler had been purchased by Aldus who was in turn purchased by Adobe and that wonderful program was taken out to the pasture and shot. And they say that Microsoft is a monopoly? Ha, ha, ha!!!! What about Adobe?

Anyway, fast forward to 2007 and I find myself again with the need to use Photoshop as everyone swears it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. As a result, I purchase the top of the line CS2 suite I could buy and once again they come out with CS3 about a month later. This time they are kind enough to offer me an upgrade, but not to the super duper top of the line version, but an inferior version that causes me to lose some of the products I had in my version. Wow, this is the same crappy Adobe I remember from years ago!

Anyway, I get my new copy of CS3 that magazines are raving about and I'm expecting something really great. I install it (which turned out to be a 6 week process due to problems with the upgrade) and guess what - it looks like the same POS that I was using back in the 6.0.1 days! This ugly beast hasn't changed, and sadly it hasn't improved! Well, that's not entirely true, but in terms of usability it is still crap. A relic of poor design from the early 90's and they seem to be proud of it. There are ton of features that are completely undiscoverable without inside knowledge, that it is no wonder there is an entire industry dedicated to teaching you how to use this piece of crap. Anyway, this time there's no manual and the choices for resources are daunting so I just decided to go to the local library and take a look for myself.

The Review

After going through a stack of books, I found one that really caught my eye. It was called Teach Yourself VISUALLY Adobe Photoshop CS3 and it seemed like it was something that I could read easily and not feel like I needed to know the secret handshake to be successful.

This book is a very colorful book that starts from square one (and I mean square one - new computer users would be comfortable with this book so most of us will skip the first chapter or two). It teaches you all of the basics of Adobe Photoshop CS3 in a very easy to understand way and it doesn't make you feel like an idiot (or is it dummy these days :-)). I followed along with each of the topics which are broken into two page sections where you can lay your book flat and learn a given topic. It is well organized and easy to read. After about 5 days of reading after work I found myself comfortable with Photoshop and ready to take on different challenges.

A really nice feature of this book is that it also gives you a bunch of tips along the way of little obscure things that you'd never know if someone didn't tell you (like double-clicking on the hand zooms the image to "fit to window" size - who knew????).

If you are a Photoshop novice who has been intimated by this poorly designed and painfully slow product called Adoble Photoshop, then I would encourage you to pick up this book right away and read it. It is the stepping stone you need before you take on the billions of other Photoshop resources out there and it will be one you go back to frequently when you forget how to do something.

Skill Level: Beginner
Value: Excellent (much cheaper than a course, and a stack of useless books)
Recommendation: Highly recommended for anyone new to Photoshop