One-Click Photoshop Nirvana: Truth or Rumor?
The main strength of Photoshop is also for those who are occasional users its main drawback—it has evolved to such a degree of sophistication that there are typically multiple ways to achieve the graphical task at hand. To confidently construct a path wending through the program's multiplicity of features and settings to get a job done effectively typically requires extensive daily use over a long period of time. Hence the popularity of books and online tutorials that show readers exactly what steps to follow to perform a particular task. We add Photoshop tutorials to the Graphics.com and Dynamic Graphics magazine sites every week for just this reason.
There are really three approaches to getting graphical results using Photoshop: you can perform every step manually one by one; you can quickly apply a combination of steps and settings in a number of ways, for example by using actions or Layer Styles; or you can manipulate images via third-party plugin filters. It's the second approach to which Jack Davis has dedicated his Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-Click Wow!, a book/CD combination that has been spun off from his The Photoshop Wow! Book, now in its ninth edition. The result is a slim, visually-rich volume that, coupled with its Mac/PC CD (which also works with CS), provides hundreds of ways to create graphical results that would otherwise (for many of us) prove either unattainable or take forever to realize.
To this end the deep experience of Jack Davis, firmly amongst the pantheon of Photoshop users and educators, makes all the difference. His is a re-assuring, straightforward voice that builds confidence in the user, by taking care to explain what's going on under the one-click hood and encourage the reader to continue with further explorations. A five-page tutorial on using Layer Styles, for example, sets the stage nicely for the material on the CD.
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Regarding the CD content itself, the material is primarily devoted to Layer Styles, for the creation of everything from wacky texture effects, selection edge treatments, a wide range of photographic effects, type and graphical effects and even rollover-button creation. True, many of these are of the oh-so-nineties "eye candy" variety and should be used with restraint, but they can all be toned down via tweaking and put to serious use. There are rather more photo frame presets than I would have liked to see, these being for the most part pretty corny, but a heathy dose of custom shape overlays, brushes, paint and clone presets, actions and even 150 not-bad seamless patterns adds up to quite the grab-bag of graphical goodies.
I was initially a little dubious by the premise of this book, not because I already know how to achieve all the graphical effects promised by the book (I don't) but because the whole "one-click" approach to doing anything visual of value is anathema to me—perhaps a vestige of my Protestant upbringing. But after installing and working through a heathy whack of the CD's contents, it seems to me like a worthy effort that could be of great value to a certain level of Photoshop user—the one for whom using the program is not a central occupation and who is typically stuck performing the same tasks in the same way. For them, the book can not only quickly add a new dimension to their work if they employ the material as provided, but it should provide a path to first modifying it and then going off in their own directions.
Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-Click Wow! can be purchased from the Peachpit Press site for $26.99.
Chris Dickman
Editor, Graphics.com
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