Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC [Paperback]

Martin Evening's Adobe Photoshop for Photographers is established as one of the classic Photoshop reference works. With Adobe Photoshop CS5 Martin Evening continues to maintain this standard.

Adobe Photoshop is used by a range of professionals such as web designers and print designers as well as photographers. Many of the features in Photoshop are rarely, if ever needed for photo editing and this book focuses on Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge for photo editing enabling a much deeper explanation of how to use a particular Photoshop technique than could be covered in a book aimed at all the Photoshop features. Most techniques are described in detail and provide an excellent understanding of how the technique works so you can apply them to your own photographs. Unfortunately, some features do not include this background understanding and are presented as a part of a recipe e.g. the blend if slider. This makes it more difficult to get to grips with these method.

There are 15 chapters in 746 pages covering:

Photoshop Fundamentals
Configuring Photoshop
Camera Raw Processing
Sharpening and Noise Reduction
Image Editing Essentials
Black and White
Extending the Dynamic Range
Image Retouching
Layers, Selections and Masking
Essential Filters for Photo Editing
Image Management
Color Management
Print Output
Output for the Web
Automating Photoshop

Everybody will have their own favourite new feature in CS5 and these are all covered in the book along with extensive information on existing features.

A few items have been dropped from previous versions for the book e.g. "What's New" chapter has been dropped and Darkroom Effects has less coverage so you may want to hold onto older copies of the book.

Although the "What's New Chapter has gone the included DVD has movie tutorials on all the new features in Photoshop CS5 relevant to photographers:

The new raw converter engine
Raw sharpening and noise reduction
Puppet warp
Lens Correction
Content aware fill
New HDR features
New masking and selection techniques
Mini Bridge
New print output features

Since the book was published an update to Adobe Camera Raw 6.1 features Lens Correction in Camera Raw as well as Photoshop. A movie covering this can be downloaded for free from the companion web site for this book.

The DVD also contains many, but not all (due to copyright), of the sample photographs so you can practice the techniques described in the book.

Summary

Photoshop CS5 is a significant update from CS4 for photo editing and this book is an excellent reference work and guide to the new features. A few minor points could improve the book but this is still the best reference work for photo editing using Photoshop CS5.

I struggled with Martin Evenings Photoshop 7 book - he does not pitch himself at beginners. I used his CS2 book as my standard reference. Having just upgraded to CS5 I preordered this book and have been really impressed. Its very well laid out as usual, and it covers pretty much everything a photographer would need to know, with plenty of step-through examples and recommendations about settings that might be suited to various images. Camera RAW 6 is a huge improvement on CS2, and its pretty hard to imagine having the time to figure it out alone. I read this through in a week - its an enjoyable read as well as helpful. A top quality product - both CS5, and the book. Beginners would be advised to read something 'easier' first.

I'd ideally like to split this review into two parts. The first is for those who did not own the CS4 version of Martin's book. If you fit snugly into this category then you can now sit back and heave a sigh of relief as your search for a great book on Photoshop CS5 with photographers in mind has come to an end - this is the one. Martin's knowledge of both Photoshop and photography are unsurpassable. A very successful London based photographer in his own right he demonstrates with great verbosity and clarity those post-processing techniques which have served him well. No stone is left unturned and this book is the best reference for CS5 you can find on the market. I recommend it without hesitation.

For those of you who owned the CS4 version of this book and are wondering whether to fork out on the CS5 version I would say that this should be carefully considered. Of the almost 750 pages in the book I would say a significant proportion of those are the same or have only very minor changes. Most of the photos are the same which is a shame as I think there's benefit showing different examples of the same technique even if the textual accompaniment does transgress from book to book - this is what Scott Kelby does and it works. Martin does of course cover the new features within CS5 to the level of detail we have come to expect from him, but it's a big ask to pay the full retail price for this book just for that information especially considering there are plenty of video tutorials emerging on the web (AdobeTV is a good place to start). These would perhaps be a better option to cover the delta.

In short I would say that this book is definite buy for those who did not own the CS4 version and a possible buy for those that did (read my second paragraph and decide for yourself). I should just clarify that if you have the CS3 or earlier versions of Martin's book then this is still a definite buy.