Just as the camera is no longer relegated to the elite or industry professionals, Photoshop is no longer
considered the tool of graphic designers alone. Whether it is used to scan photographs, paint a
landscape, apply effects to text, create Web pages, or alter images, the application enables all users to
accomplish one common feat: to produce professional-quality images in virtually any digital format.
You may be surprised at how many people outside of the design industry are aware of and have even used
Adobe Photoshop. The software application that is the industry standard for manipulating digital
imagery is also the most commonly referred to when the topic comes up even among those who dont use
Photoshop every day of their professional lives.
A salesman might say, The folks in marketing are Photoshopping a representation of what the final
product will look like. Or, you might hear the host on The Daily Show say in reference to the story
graphic for a news item, that graphic of President Bush and Putin was badly Photoshopped. I apologize.
The artists responsible for this outrage will be flogged. Or your relative might say why did you
Photoshop my head onto Mt. Rushmore? Photoshop is a part of our culture as much as Xerox has
come to mean photocopy.
However, because of its proliferation amongst such a large user base, Photoshop does different things for
different users. And because most of the programs users employ the program for a specific purpose, what
one user knows might not be helpful in solving another users problem.
This book, then, is assembled to help all of Photoshops diverse users quickly find answers to their specific
challenges:
How do I correct for red eye in my photographs? (Task 112 explains how.)
How do I convert my documents color space? (Task 45 details the process.)
How do I convert my photographs for Web display? (Task 235 shows the way.)
And these are only three questions this book addresses.
This book doesnt try to be an in-depth guide to using Photoshop to achieve a specific goal such as creating
Web sites or publication graphics. Rather, this book serves as an indispensable reference, ready to
provide you with quick-to-follow, easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions to specific challenges
culled from over 10 years of professional and instructional experience with Photoshop.