Great Reference Book!

I have this book and find myself reaching for it everytime I do a scrapbook layout on PSE 4 and am wondering how to manipulate my photos and the backgrounds. What I like about it most is that there are before and after color photos of the screen and the photo they altered; as well as detailed easy to follow instructions. For instance, they show the actual tool bar and with a red arrow, point to the place you click on. These arrows are numbered so you can easily tell what to do. There is also text at the bottom with clear instructions that correlate to the arrows.

Previous reviewers disliked the intense colors and overall quality of the publication. While I agree that the colors could have been chosen better (black writing on dark turquoise is hard to read), overall, it is the colored photos, colored arrows and steps which make it easy to execute whatever you want to do.

Now, if you are looking for advanced photoshop techniques, this is not the book for you. But, for just general photoshop elements work like retouching photos, adjusting backgrounds of photos, adding frames, improving lighting, working with type, removing blemishes, etc., this book is great!

Not the QUE quality I have known before!

I'm thankful for the review I read here. Afterwards I checked it out at
a local book store. QUE should be ashamed of themselves!

Visual Confusion

The publishers need to take a basic layout class. The page paper is magazine quality with at least five bold colors applied liberally to each page. The color coding is supposed to simplify, but overwhelms the eyes. Tips are at the bottom of the page printed in black on a medium blue. Definitely glad I made a trip to Borders to look before I purchased.