How to Cheat in Photoshop Elements 7: Creating stunning photomontages on a budget

Having trouble getting an artistic idea out of your head and onto the screen? Want to produce amazing creations in Elements without reading pages and pages of instructions? How to Cheat in Elements is the can?t-miss book with the can-do attitude. Under the expert guidance of Elements masters David Asch and Steve Caplin, you?ll get the hands-on experience needed to quickly craft inspired images that captivate the imagination.

Fool your friends by creating montages and manipulations that look like the genuine article. Save time with invaluable shortcuts and tips to cut through unnecessary steps, helping you to work faster and smarter. Work through each section to build up your skills or dip into a project to learn a new technique:
* turn day into night
* add snow, shadows and water to your scenes
* make fire and smoke
* give your car a re-spray
?if you can imagine it, we can show you how to do it in Photoshop Elements!

Covering the latest tools and features in Elements 7, this book contains cutting-edge projects, tips and techniques as well as activities relevant to previous Elements versions. QuickTime movie tutorials and images for all projects in the book are included on the accompanying CD-ROM, with additional support and an active reader forum on the website for the book: www.howtocheatinphotoshopelements.com.

* Fun and creative, with more than 80 full colour, step-by-step projects, supported by QuickTime movie tutorials and image files
* In-depth coverage of photomontage and image manipulation you won?t find in the wealth of Elements books focused on photography post-capture editing
* Part of the successful Focal Press ?How to Cheat in? series, featuring Steve Caplin?s best-selling How to Cheat in Photoshop titles





User review
Helpful Tips and Tricks
I found this book extremely helpful in giving tips for `cheating' with Photoshop Elements. Nothing illegal here, just short and to the point step by step easy instructions for using the powerful tools in Photoshop Elements, and this applies to versions 3 through 7. So even if you have an older version, you too can do most of the things the professionals do with the full fledged Photoshop, without all of its complexity. I am just a beginning user of this software, however, the book is laid out in such a way that you can quickly learn new techniques and find new ideas to more fully utilize the features of this product. The authors encourage you to find something you are interested in doing and jump right in and try your hand. No need to read from the beginning, cover to cover. Also, there is an included CD with the book that contains all of the project images covered in the book so that you can follow along with the examples, step by step until you are able to duplicate the same process. I went directly to chapter seven where I learned to create a custom pattern that I was able to then use with the pattern stamp tool to modify an aerial photograph to show what an area would look like after being developed. Instead of having to send this task out to someone else, I was able to quickly do it myself. I can't wait to try another chapter and improve my photo editing skills. If you are looking for a great resource to more fully utilize the power of this under appreciated software, look no further, you will not be disappointed.

User review
A photo manipulator's dream book
How to Cheat in Photoshop Elements 7 includes a CD for both Mac and PC users and tells how to create exceptional graphics. Elements is a montage application and shows how to do everything from importing missing people into photos to wrapping surfaces, creating curtains, distorting perspective, making curls and folds, and more. It's a photo manipulator's dream book, and tops for any Photoshop library.

User review
Great Manual
I really enjoy this book. You can always go to the `Photoshop Elements` web site for `how to` videos, but it is so nice to be able to have a book for easy reference. I highly recommend the book for contents and photos.

Book was purchased from Amazon. Fast Service.

User review
Great Format --Lots of Processes -- Good for Me & I'm a Beginner
I own Photoshop Elements 7 and am disappointed at the fact that barely any directions or information is provided in writing to help me learn the program. I find it very hard and frustrating to learn from their help section. I used to own Elements 3 and for six years barely used it as I didn't understand the program or even what was possible to do with the program. After purchasing Elements 7 I vowed to teach myself to make better use of the program and to use it to do what I wanted that I was sure it was capable of doing. I realized to achieve that I'd need a book from a third party to learn from. Before I purchased any book I had the chance to accept a review copy of this book. I consider myself a beginner user of Photoshop Elements 7 and this is the first book I've used to teach myself with.

This book works with PS Elements versions 3 through 7.

The first thing I was happy to learn in the preface is how Photoshop Elements 7 compares to Photoshop. Full retail price of the Photoshop is ten times the cost of Photoshop Elements. I keep hearing that Photoshop is what everyone should own if only they can afford it. However in the preface it says this `As the `baby brother' to the full Photoshop CS4, Photoshop Elements has long suffered the stigma of being a cheap, unprofessional product. Cheap it may be: but it contains 90% of the features found in the full Photoshop and, as we've seen from user-created artwork, it's anything but unprofessional. It's true that Elements is rarely used in a graphics studio or publishing company. But this is mainly because it doesn't include the high-end prepress features found in Photoshop; using Elements doesn't mean that you're working with a substandard application.` Okay, fantastic, I now knew that PSE7 is not junk!

In order to do some techniques that apparently Photoshop does, one has to `cheat` in PSE7. This book teaches those cheats as well as other steps to photomontage processes. A person may say `PSE7 can't do that, you need Photoshop` but according to the authors of this book, that is not true, you can often get the same exact effect and end result by doing processes they teach in the book even if you use different buttons or actions in the process itself.

The best thing is that the book is laid out with two page spreads on one topic. All you need to know to do a task is on those two pages. The book is heavy on illustration with stepped out images for each step as well as text to explain it. Introductory paragraphs tell background info before you get started. A `hot tip' is present for every process as well. I feel the stepped out illustrations combined with text and the way the authors get to the point, don't fill the book with extra words is just fine for a beginner to learn from.

I had two main questions. First, is this the book that could help me learn to use the program in ways I wanted to use it and second, is this a book for beginners?

I do believe that a curious beginner can learn just fine from this book. Knowledge and skill builds up so if you want to do an advanced technique from the middle of the book you may first need to spend time learning the foundation steps taught earlier in the book. This seems perfectly reasonable to me. So to thoroughly learn the program, the terms and processes it would be best to start at the beginning and go through a good number (if not all) of the exercises, even if you think you don't need to know that process. Spending time learning the program before the exact moment that you desire to do something seems to be the best thing to do. I know that will take some time but I can envision less frustration on the day that you decide you want to do a certain process right then and there. The issue is in order to do something more complex like put open eyes on a person who closed their eyes in one shot, the beginner may not realize they first need to know processes A and B to try process C.

The book is meant to be used as tool, to go through it and learn as you go along. This makes it perfect for those who learn best `by doing`. If you are looking for a text heavy book that is very watered down then maybe a more basic introductory book to the program would be best for you, I'm not sure, because this is a preference thing that is unique to each person. If you are a beginner who feels confident that if they do what the book says, that you'll learn, then this is the book for you. Beginners who know they know little but who feel capable to `learn by doing` will be just fine and can learn a LOT from this book.

As the subtitle states this book is heavy on artistic techniques for creating photomontages. This is useful for the family photographer for things like putting open eyes on a person whose eyes were closed or swapping heads or cleaning up backgrounds or changing backgrounds, how about putting a blue sky behind that famous building you visited on a cloudy day? Fun techniques like changing a parked car to look like it's moving with a blurred background are also taught. If you want to play with your photos and do cool things with them, or even add text to an image, this book provides all you need to know.

If you still wonder if this book is good for a beginner I'll share that I put it in the hands of my nine year old on his first time using PSE7 and he was able to follow the directions and do what the book taught him to do! He also had much less fear about learning the program and a lot of laughs while doing funny things to photos he had taken.

I'm rating this book 5 stars = I love it. The price is reasonable. I feel a beginner can learn from it. It teaches a ton of information in one volume (more than I will ever want or need to do with the program). I love the clear directions and the stepped out visual instructions.

The things I don't like about the book which are not enough to downgrade the star rating or my love of the book are: some of the images they created look fake. Some examples are the pumpkin carved page 185, bad skin tones on page 201 and 203 of famous people's heads put into a family photo, and shadowing or light not quite looking right on page 211. Also not counted in my rating is that the book contains directions to do things I'd never want to do as I realize we all have our own preferences for how we may want to use the program plus I'd rather have more processes in the book than less. Lastly, I would have liked (even a small) gallery of just photos that showed stunning photomontages to inspire me or show the range of possibilities and that showed superior examples, rather than just seeing them as the `end' shot on the process pages.

Note to Mac Users: The book is set up to teach to Mac and Windows users which I thought was great. At the time that I'm writing this review, I read that after the book was published the program had not been released to Mac yet. This is something that Mac users will have to research yourself to check the status of. I didn't feel that the book's authors should be criticized or the book downgraded due to a decision made on behalf of another company.

User review
photo-finishing Confidence Builder :)
`How to Cheat in Photoshop Elements 7: Creating Stunning Photomontages on a Budget` is my new Best Friend and desktop companion! :) An amazingly easy to follow `cheat` and walk-thru of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.

Large color photos, clear and detailed instructions, extremely interesting tips and tricks to some pretty amazing photo finishing techniques. `How to Cheat in Photoshop Elements 7: Creating Stunning Photomontages on a Budget` is a lot about learning keyboard shortcut keys (mac or pc) and comes with a handy tear off shortcut key card found on the book cover. :)

A real photo-finishing confidence builder, imo. also, see my review of Adobe Photoshop Elements 7. Highly recommended! --Katharena Eiermann, 2009