For those who prefer takeout to cooking from scratch, the CD-ROM contains a bunch of custom layer styles, rollovers, actions, and more.

Editorial Reviews

This design cookbook now features nourishing meals along with its famous desserts. Most design professionals already own books in the Wow! series, and they're likely dog-eared from constant use. Authors Dayton and Davis have incorporated the latest changes in Photoshop 6 and added a lot of new material based upon readers' suggestions.

Although this is a series better suited to experienced users, Photoshop newbies will like the new opening chapter on fundamentals.

Each of the subsequent chapters--color, retouching, compositing, using filters, painting, using type, and Web graphics and animation--also begins with a "Basics" section that goes over pertinent tools and issues.

For example, the chapter on color begins by explaining adjustment layers, blending modes, color management, and other important topics. The remainder of each chapter is made up of techniques, from one to six pages long, each a recipe/tutorial showing how to cook up a Wow! effect.

Also new are complete .psd files (on the CD-ROM) for most of the images, including before and after files used in the techniques.

For those who prefer takeout to cooking from scratch, the CD-ROM contains a bunch of custom layer styles, rollovers, actions, and more.

In many cases, one button gets you a fast result. There's even a new pullout page, a "One-Click Styles Sampler," which shows exactly what you get on the CD-ROM.

Users can also get to the Wow! factor sooner in the "Catalog" sections, which are series of quick options under one theme
(e.g., Fast Filter Embellishing, Quick Tone & Color Adjustments), that enable readers to grab, at a glance, just the right solution (masking curves? auto contrast?). One great new section is "Anatomy of a Layer Style," in which readers learn the mystery behind making perfect clear-blue-plastic effects, just like the ones used in Mac OS X (and everything else these days).

On the whole, this is a new and much improved Photoshop Wow! book; it's not just about glitz, chrome, and neon (although that's all still here). Beginners will get more guidance, and experienced users will love the yummy desserts. --Angelynn Grant

Effective whether you're a Photoshop pro or a demanding amateur, The Photoshop 6 Wow! Book contains the widest selection of useful projects, tips, tutorials, techniques, and examples of professionally produced work you're likely to find in one place.

What's remarkable about this book is that every page contains something worth knowing.

While other Photoshop books have their strengths, be it Web production, photographic retouching and repro techniques, or illustration, The Photoshop 6 Wow! Book provides in-depth knowledge on just about every aspect of Photoshop 6.

Tutorials covering techniques you might already be familiar with often provide better ways of doing things or additional related information. Where they cover new ground, the results are so stunning you'll want to try them out and add them to your repertoire.

Along with the staples--framing with masks, fixing problem photos, quick masking and blending, filters, and so on--you'll find gems like focusing attention with color, blurring backgrounds while retaining grain, hand-tinting black and white photos, applying images to textured surfaces, and painting with the art history brush.

The book focuses strongly on new Photoshop 6 features such as layer styles, vector shapes, and fill layers as well as improved text handling. This makes it ideal for getting up to speed on the new features and interface enhancements in Photoshop 6, but anyone using older versions would do better with The Photoshop 5/5.5 Wow! Book or The Photoshop 4 Wow! Book by the same authors.

Screen shots, before and after examples, and galleries of professionally produced work in full color throughout make this an easy book to dip into as well as a good foundation for a structured course. --Ken McMahon, Amazon.co.uk

From the Back Cover

Looking for state-of-the-art practical advice and inspiration? The Photoshop 6 Wow! Book strikes the perfect balance, giving you creative, timesaving tips and techniques for Web graphics, illustration, photo correction and compositing, and special effects. Packed with stunning new examples of Photoshop artistry, Photoshop 6 Wow! presents real-world, full-color artwork accompanied by clear, step-by-step instructions that you can use immediately to create your own projects.

This updated edition shows you how to get the most from Photoshop 6's redesigned interface, new Shape tools, improved typesetting, and other vector-based features. You'll also get expert instruction on ImageReady's automated rollover states and one of the hottest new features--Layer Styles--for instant, elegant special effects.

The accompanying Wow! CD-ROM is invaluable, loaded with "before and after" tutorial files for the techniques in the book, with layers, adjustments and Styles intact.

You'll also find dozens of preset Wow! Layer Styles and improved Actions designed to automate Photoshop creativity and productivity, along with libraries of new Wow! Patterns, Custom Shapes, Gradients, Brushes, and bevel Contours. Educators can use the Instructor's Guide PDF to design a Photoshop class--whether a single seminar or a semester-long course--based on the book-and-CD package.

Find out why the award-winning Photoshop Wow! is the best-selling Photoshop book of all time--and why this edition tops them all!

For the first time ever, before-and-after files provided on CD for every exercise Every project is completely new or completely rewritten for Photoshop 6's new capabilities -- streamlined for the efficiencies and quality provided by applying layer styles and vector tools in Photoshop Presets included on disk for the shapes, contours, gradients, and patterns in the exercises

About the Author

Headquartered at the Wow!offices in Southern California, Linnea Dayton and Jack Davis lecture and conduct workshops internationally. Davis is principal of JHDavis Design and is an award-winning designers and illustrator. Dayton is principal of Dayton & Associates, and is an award-winning author and editor. They are the authors of all previous editions of this book.