Hello to all of you out there in photo PC land. On the table today is Photoshop 7 Artistry, the reference guide to the latest image manipulation program from Adobe. Carrying the reader from the first steps of Photoshop 7, to advanced retouching, color calibration, image manipulation, as well as giving you an in-depth look into all of Photoshop 7’s other capabilities, this book is the only guide you’ll need to help you master your digital image.
Over the past several months I have been attending a photography seminar, where I received over 24 hours of Photoshop 7 instruction. Less than thirty minutes of reading this book doubled the amount of information that the workshop had to offer. I believe that this book should be adopted as the textbook standard for teaching Photoshop. It is designed to improve upon and advance the skills of the most proficient Photoshop user, and still introduce the basic principles and operations to Photoshop newcomers. Offering insight from older darkroom methods the book can show you how to use simple burning and dodging techniques or show how to apply the program’s levels and curves graphs to Ansel Adams Zoning system.
I was initially misled by the title of the book. The term artistry brought to mind the application of skills to form art. I was expecting the book to offer a few different methods of application. In fact, the book is roughly 75% tutorial and 25% artistic application. Some of the sample images in the artistry section are not exactly my idea of professional quality, but overall the book gives you an understanding of the tools and methods of application. About half of the book deals with color management, such as, printer to monitor calibrations, color corrections, and colorizing and toning black and white photos. Another fault that I found with the book was the layout of the screen captures. They seemed to be placed all over the page without any form of consistency. This being a book on design I would expect it to be designed well. However, once I got my bearings I found the captures to be very helpful with wonderful color.
The secret to this book is (brace yourself). . . reading it. In the intro to the table of contents the book notes that there are a few chapters that everyone is expected to read (11 to be exact). Most of the mandatory chapters explain why the book does something a certain way. Once the reader takes the time to read those chapters the rest of the book can be used like a cookbook for your digital photography.
The program also has an accompanying disk that gives a step-by-step walk through for several of the chapters with comparison images in the book to make sure the user is getting proper results. If every amateur photographer had and used a copy of this book, I would have to consider a new job market. I feel that even the designers of Photoshop could learn a few things from this book. A “must have” for your Photoshop library.

Photoshop 7 Artistry: Mastering the Digital Image by Barry Haynes and Wendy Crumpler. 2002. New Riders Publishing. 466 pages. $55.