I’ve been using Photoshop for years, and although I have a lot of experience with this powerful software, still consider myself to be an “advanced beginner.” Most of the things that I use Photoshop for involve more or less straightforward photo retouching and enhancing, with an occasional more advanced “artistic” project. I’ve been looking into trying to improve my Photoshopping skills, and Martin Evening’s exhaustive book fits my needs and requirements perfectly and then some.

The writing is informative and lucid, the explanations are clear and easy to follow, but this is not necessarily a tutorial book. If you were looking for a more pedagogical introduction to the Photoshop’s photography techniques and capabilities, then I’d recommend that you check out the companion book Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: The Ultimate Workshop. However, even this book has plenty of examples and worked-out exercises that you’d learn a lot of useful techniques just by familiarizing yourself with Photoshop.

The book comes with the included DVD which contains most of the images and other files that are used throughout the book for illustrative purposes. The DVD also includes video lessons, which are overall nice but not that well organized. The video lessons sort of start in a middle of some exposition, without much in the way of introduction, and it seems that the pictures and files that it refers to are not the same ones that are included with the DVD. This might be due to the fact that the files have been organized according to the previous editions of the book, but as I have not used any of them I cannot state this for a fact.

The accompanying website is very nice, but from what I’ve seen during my brief time there it doesn’t provide much supplemental material. I wish that most of the DVD content had been made available on the website instead, as I think this would have made it much more portable and accessible.

This is a very large and exhaustive book, perhaps the single best resource out there right now for the photoshopping photographers. It is an invaluable resource that can teach you about all the aspects of Photoshop that you may encounter in your photography work.