Strongly recommend

I have a shelves full of books on photography, photoshop and all subjects that touch on these subjects. This is a book that I pull out again and again. It is easy to follow and I liked the way Scott included a little of his personality with personal humor. ( I am used to DRY DRY DRY!!.. It was kind of nice to actually have a laugh or two while I learned!) I've seen a lot of people claim it, but, this guy REALLY IS A PHOTOSHOP EXPERT! This book is not an indepth study of photoshop or color or what camera you should buy, it just gets right down to the nuts and bolts of getting specific things done. It is more like one useful technique after another but good enough that I still wanted to just read it cover to cover like a normal book. While everything in there did not get 'gold stars' from me, the results were mostly very good. If I ever get them committed to memory I wont have to keep pulling out to see 'what did Scott say to do about that?' He lays out step by step instructions for things like enlarging a photo (up to poster size) with minimum loss in quality. Personally, I was quite pleased. I was 'beginning' to 'maybe intermediate' photoshop user when I purchased.

Excellent

It is an excellent book, but I didn't give it a 5-stars rating for the following reasons:

1)The author tried to make the book interesting by sharing his anecdotes with the readers. I would rather see more useful information.

2) The book didn't not have much cover on coloring, and fixing landscape image.

3) The author often presented a step-by-step instruction without much explanation. For example, no explanation on various blending mode (Overlay, Soft Light), and color mode (RGB, LAB, CMYK).

All in all, it is a excellent book if you are interested in facial retouching and sharpening techniques.

The BEST, most practical, Photoshop book out there

I probaby own, or have owned at one time, at least six million books about Photoshop, and this one is really the only one I need. It's a joke at my house that I'm always in front of my computer, with *that book* on my lap. I actually have a graphic design degree, and I still refer to "that book" at least once a week for practical guidance on how to solve a specific issue with a specific photo. I highly recommend it, and have purchased copies for several people-you know, those people who say, "Hey! Can you fix this photo for me?"