The book is primarily a guide to using Photoshop as an effective photographer's tool. A substantial portion of the book is spent on digital image capturing, resolution, and color management. If you are at all unclear about the RGB workspace, but need to know the ins and outs of profiles, this book will definitely help. There's even a movie on the CD-ROM explaining the RGB, CMYK, and LAB spaces. Prepress proofing and outputting are also well covered.

Adobe Photoshop 6.0 for Photographers also runs down each tool and its options and then presents the techniques most photographers will want to know: basic image adjustments (for example, perspective cropping and unsharp masking), color adjustments (like using variations or replacing color), repairing an image (for example, cloning or rescuing shadow details), montage techniques, black and white effects (including helpful information on duotones), cool coloring effects (like channel mixer adjustments), and about 50 pages showing what can be done with layer effects and filters.

These sections are not so much tutorials as examples that illustrate an effect or set of effects, displayed in stages using professional-level photographs. As opposed to the numbered step-by-step approach, each section in this book has several paragraphs of text, written in a conversational yet supportive and knowledgeable style, accompanied by images and screen shots with detailed captions. (You can get an idea of this by reading excerpts from the book on the author's Web site, www.evening.demon.co.uk.) You'll be able to follow along better if you've already worked in Photoshop. However, if you work professionally with digital photos, the material in here is stuff you will want to know, no matter what level of user you are.

There are a lot of creative ideas to be discovered in this book, in addition to the necessary facts about maintaining the visual integrity of your photographs as they go through the digital process. --Angelynn Grant