Title: Photoshop 7: The Complete Reference
Author: Laurie Ann Ulrich
Publisher: Osborne McGraw-Hill http://www.osborne.com
Publication Date: August 2002
Pages: 768 with CD
ISBN: 0-07-222311-1
Price: $49.99

Photoshop 7: The Complete Reference by Laurie Ann Ulrich features functional examples drawn from real-world situations, as well as beautiful artwork and inspiring ideas for graphic designers, photographers, and Web developers. You'll learn to use the essential selection, drawing, painting, and retouching tools in addition to the latest special effects wizardry for conjuring virtually anything you can visualize. It will also teach you to restore and retouch existing images, create original artwork, and use Photoshop to design for the Web. Plus it covers how to create animations, build your own automated tools, and discover online resources for Photoshop.

Inside you'll find information on the following:

• Discover the tool of choice for graphics professionals--and all that's new in Photoshop 7;
• Add content to images with painting and drawing tools;
• Clean, edit, and improve the quality and content of images;
• Generate original images from a blank background canvas;
• Create freeform shapes with pencils, pens, and brushes;
• Apply fonts, color, and effects to text;
• Transform images with on-board and third-party filters;
• Learn Web requirements--including appropriate file formats for fast-loading Web graphics;
• Understand color models and palettes, and color management tools.

Photoshop 7: The Complete Reference consists of an Introduction, 20 chapters, an appendix, and is divided into four parts.

Introduction: The book begins with a special Introduction which includes an overview of the book.

• Chapter 1: Getting Started in Photoshop: What It Does Best and What's New in Photoshop 7--Looks at what exactly Photoshop does, to which specific tasks it's well-suited, and how it's changed in recent versions to meet the changing demands of the increasingly diverse group of graphic designers and artists. It also provides an opportunity to find out what's new and exciting in this latest release.
• Chapter 2: Understanding the Photoshop Interface--This chapter is to make sure you don't waste any time figuring things out on your own as it introduces you to the Photoshop interface--the tools, options, menus, palettes, and dialog boxes that you need to find, customize, and utilize in order to master Photoshop.
• Chapter 3: Customizing Photoshop's Preferences--Shows you how to change the preferences to meet your needs.
• Chapter 4: Importing Existing Images--Looks at the different types of files that can be imported to Photoshop.

• Chapter 5: Working with Selections, Paths, and Masks-- Shows you how to select geometric shaped areas, draw freeform selections or use drawing tools to isolate a section of your image for editing. Plus you learn to use related commands to augment, reduce, combine, or invert your selection as needed.
• Chapter 6: Understanding, Applying, and Adjusting Colors--Shows you how to apply colors, how to chose color modes, how to adjust colors, and how to make sure you're using the right colors for individual projects.
• Chapter 7: Making Artistic Use of Photoshop's Painting and Drawing Tools--In this chapter you'll learn to operate the tools, take advantage of their options, and through a varied set of sample images, discover new ways to paint, draw, and enhance your images with Photoshop.
• Chapter 8: Cleaning and Editing Photographs--Discusses how to use the tools specifically designed for repairing photos, and also how to use Photoshop[s drawing and painting tools to add and restore content as well.
• Chapter 9: Resizing and Cropping Images--Discusses how to change the size of your image, as opposed to scaling an image. You also learn how resolution plays a part in changing the dimensions of the image. Then you learn to crop or trim the image and to change the canvas size.

• Chapter 10: Creating and Working with Layers--Introduces you to the Layers palette and the Layer menu, how they function and work together to create, organize, and manage layers. It shows you various types of layers, including Image, Text, Adjustment, and Shape Layers and lets you practice with different types. Applying Blending Modes, styles, and masks to create special effects is also discussed.
• Chapter 11: Adding Shapes to Photoshop Creations--Covers how to draw shapes using the selection tools and the various Shape tools. In addition to drawing the shapes, you learn how to add them to layers and how to create shape layers that contain nothing but the shape. You also learn to create tool presets fro the Shape tools so that you can draw consistent shapes throughout one or more images.
• Chapter 12: Using Fills and Styles to Enhance Shapes and Layers--Provides an in-depth discussion of applying special fill effects and styles to shapes and layers. You learn how to customize the way gradients, patterns, textures, and other visual effects are applied; and how to create your own custom fills and styles for consistency throughout your images.
• Chapter 13: Transforming Images with Filters--Introduces you to apply and customizing filters and to control where and how they affect the appearance of your images. You also learn which filters and types of filters work best in certain situations, and some of the limitations on filters that the color model and the file format you're working with can impose. In addition, it discusses how to use the Liquify and Extract commands, and to add watermarks to your images to mark them as your own.
• Chapter 14: Adding Words to Pictures--You learn that Photoshop differentiates between point and paragraph type, and what's involved in inserting them into an image. Plus it discusses the various methods for selecting text, and how to use the Character palette to specify fonts and font sizes, and also how to set your font color. There is a discussion of how to modify text orientation, spacing, and scaling. Lastly, it examines the Paragraph palette to align, justify, and indent paragraph type.
• Chapter 15: Applying Special Effects to Text--Provides a thorough look at applying special effects to text such as smoothing the edges of type, changing its orientation, adjusting its alignment, apply blending options and shadows, beveling and embossing text, filling text, applying patterns and gradients, and working with text masks.
• Chapter 16: Printing Your Photoshop Creations--Leads you through printing your Photoshop images. You learn how to utilize the setup options for your printer. You also learn how to use the extensive options located in the Printing dialog box.

• Chapter 17: Optimizing Web Graphics--Discusses the file types currently supported for web use, how to optimize images for the Web into these file types using the Save For Web dialog box, and how to use Photoshop's Web Photo Gallery feature to automatically generate a web site for displaying JPEG images.
• Chapter 18: Getting to Know ImageReady--Find out what's new in ImageReady 7.0, how Photoshop and ImageReady work together, and what differences you can expect to discover when you switch from Photoshop to ImageReady. The Animation, Rollovers, Image Map, and Slice palettes are covered in detail, preparing you to use their tools as you move on to learn how to create animations, rollovers, slices, and image maps in Chapter 19.
• Chapter 19: Creating ImageReady Animations, Rollovers, Slices, and image Maps--Now that you've been introduced to the ImageReady interface in Chapter 18, you're ready to ut the tools and palettes to use. In this chapter, you'll learn to create animated GIF files, set up rollovers to add interactivity and visual interest to your web pages, and slice large images into pieces for easier and faster loading on web pages. In addition, you'll learn to create image maps.
• Chapter 20: Using and Creating Actions of Automatic Special Effects--Learn to automate your Photoshop activities through the use of Actions. It discusses how to create your own Actions and to use Actions created by other people, how to locate third-party Actions online and through newsgroups. Lastly it discusses how to edit Actions and to utilize additional automation features.

• Appendix: What's On the CD-ROM: Lists the contents of the book CD-ROM.

For running Photoshop 7, you need:

PC:

• Intel Pentium class III or 4 processor;
• Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 98 Special Edition, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 (service pack 2), Windows NT 4.0 (service pack 6a), Windows XP;
• 128 MB of RAM (192 MB recommended);
• 280 MB of available hard disk space;
• Color monitor with 16-bit color video card or higher;
• 800x600 or greater monitor resolution;
• CD-ROM drive.

Mac:

• Power PC processor;
• Mac OS software version 9.1, 9.2 or Mac OS X version 10.1.3;
• 128 MB of RAM (192 MB recommended);
• 320 MB of available hard disk space;
• Color monitor with 16-bit color video card or higher;
• 800x600 or greater monitor resolution;
• CD-ROM drive.