Photoshop 6/Imageready 3 Hands-On Training with CDROM

Complete with outstanding full-colour illustrations, Photoshop 6 and ImageReady Hands On Training teaches through a series of step-by-step workshops. Adobe's high-end image editing product is an industry standard, but challenging to learn. ImageReady 3.0 is the Web processing component in Photoshop, and there is a strong emphasis on Web graphics throughout the book. The beauty of the "Hands On Training" approach is that in a sense you cannot go wrong: follow the steps and you will get the results shown. Each individual exercise is short and manageable, with clear instructions and illustrations, and if that is not enough there are 23 QuickTime movies on the bundled CD that talk you through some of the key sessions.

The book is divided into 15 chapters, with each one containing around eight exercises. Early chapters cover the user interface, understanding Web colours, and image optimisation. The author moves on to look at layers, text and type, background images and image transparency. Next come image maps, slices, rollovers, and animated GIFs. Finally there is a look at Photoshop's Web Photo Gallery, and importing or exporting to different formats. In all the chapters, italicised comments and tips add to the value of the exercises themselves.

Most of the screenshots are from the Macintosh, but this should not trouble Windows users since Adobe maintains a consistent interface on the two platforms. Overall this is a great way to learn Photoshop, and comes remarkably close to the experience of attending a real-life training course. --Tim Anderson