Book Recommendation

[Russ Ford]

Lightroom Version Number

Classic - subscription

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

Hi,

I have been using Lightroom for many years and am pretty comfortable using it. I now want to step things up and use Photoshop for advanced retouching/blending of photos - be it potraits, travel photography, etc. I've tried teaching myself Photoshop but find it quite impenetrable to start off. Could anyone recommend a good book to get me started. I'm keen to find a book that not only explains how to use the key functions but also includes creative ideas on how best to use the functions.

Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Russ

 

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

I haven't been following the appearance of new books on Photoshop for a couple of years now, but I can recommend any recent Martin Evening book on Photoshop CC. As you might imagine, it's hard for books on Photoshop to keep up with all the changes from Adobe, therefore many books that are "out of date" still have the potential to be enormously helpful.

Aside from Martin Evening's books on Photoshop CC, there's a book he co-authored with Jeff Schewe: "Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: the Ultimate Workshop" (Focal Press, 2011). It's obviously older, and there will be some disjunctions between what it has in the way of Photoshop features and what the current features and user interface look like, but in my opinion that shouldn't stand in one's way.

One more recommendation is "Photoshop Masking & Compositing" by Katrin Eismann et al., second edition, New Riders, 2013.

All three of these have meant a lot to me; I still go back to them from time to time.