By Joe Dolittle
In honor of this week's Apple shindig in Cupertino, we put two Mac-related photo books to the test. Read on to learn how Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage, and Aperture Exposed: The Mac Photographer's Guide to Taming the Workflow by Ellen Anon and Josh Anon stand up to our editorial review.
See, all you Mac users out there? Sometimes we do cover the Mac. Now, quit yer complaining and go back to making sure all your clothes perfectly match your iPods.
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual
After more than two years Adobe has finally released a new version of Photoshop Elements for the Mac. Version 6 packs a lot more editing firepower than iPhoto. Photoshop Elements 6 is perfect for scrapbooking, making fancy photo collages, and creating Web galleries. It has lots of new features such as Guided Edit for performing basic editing tasks, an improved Photomerge feature, a handy Quick Selection Tool, and much more.
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual explains not only how the tools and commands work but when to use them. This full-color guide starts with the simplest functions and progresses to increasingly complex features of Elements. If you're ready for the more sophisticated tools you can easily jump around to learn specific techniques.
Connected Photographer's evaluation
We liked this book a lot. Elements is shockingly powerful for its price, Elements 6 does even more than the older versions, and if you want to learn how to use it all, you should have a guide. We liked Brundage's writing style and found this to be a very helpful guide for getting up to speed on Elements.
Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage, published by Pogue Press, is 554 pages and has a retail price of $44.99. We give Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual a rating of 4 out of 5.
RATING: 4 STARSAperture Exposed: The Mac Photographer's Guide to Taming the Workflow
Aperture Exposed provides a guide for taking advantage of the new power and abilities provided by Aperture. The book takes an unfamiliar interface and feature set and makes it logical and intuitive so that Aperture quickly feels like an old friend.
Ellen Anon is an Apple Certified Trainer in Aperture and a photo workshop instructor; she teaches thousands of photographers every year how to shoot organize and edit their images in person and through her writing. Photographer Josh Anon applies his experience in Mac OS X photo software engineering to reveal Aperture's secrets from time-saving tips to advanced workflow customization advice.
Connected Photographer's evaluation
We liked this book a lot but some of you might not. The issue is the book covers Aperture 1 and there are later versions on the market. We thought this came into our reviews library relatively recently but it does seem to be an older title. If you have an older version of Aperture then this book is a nice read. Otherwise we'd recommend you avoid it. That said some used copies are available for as low as $10 and combined with the interesting Aperture tool itself makes for a relatively low-cost solution.
Aperture Exposed: The Mac Photographer's Guide to Taming the Workflow by Ellen Anon and Josh Anon, published by Sybex, is 297 pages and has a retail price of $29.99. We give Aperture Exposed: The Mac Photographer's Guide to Taming the Workflow a rating of 3 out of 5. If it weren't out of date, it'd be worth a 4.
RATING: 4 STARS