Customer Rating: 
Summary: Good introduction to how and why to use Photoshop Elements
Comment: This book gives a balanced look at all the features of Photoshop Elements, without going into a lot of depth on any one topic. It is aimed at beginners. It has a reasonable amount of detail on the most common activities of enhancing photos and retouching photos, but these make up only a small part of the book. It tells you about many less obvious problems you may not have realized you had, such as color cast and perspective distortion.
This book is specifically for Windows, and there is a Macintosh version available: Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual I worked through the present book with the Macintosh program, and there's very little difference. Windows has an Organizer to manage your photos while the Macintosh program ships with Adobe Bridge, just like the full Photoshop CS3, but except for that you won't have any trouble using the same book on either platform.
The book is organized by task rather than by feature or tool. (An exception is a whole chapter on Layers.) The book is extensively cross-referenced; maybe TOO extensively. In the first half of the book I sometimes lost my place in the blizzard of cross-references and forgot what we were reading about. The chapter on selecting, although clear, was not well-integrated with the rest of the book. After reading it you know everything about selections except what they are good for.
There's a very thorough index, as we expect from the Missing Manual series. There were some puzzling gaps in the index. I suspected at times that it is an index of keywords; so if the book discusses a subject but doesn't call it by name then it might not show up in the index. For example, Perspective distortion is indexed, but only on p. 75 where the term is introduced and not p. 299 where the problem and its fix are discussed in detail. EXIF is not indexed even though it is discussed several places in the book.
The book goes beyond manipulating photos and tells you a good bit about what to do with your photos after your are happy with them. It goes into how to get high-quality printing, personalized merchandise, and web photo-sharing (although mysteriously Flickr is never mentioned).
Some Very Good Features in this book: (1) Calibrating your monitor: its importance and the news that colorimeter prices have come down sharply. (2) Using layers to fix major exposure problems (very short section but very useful; I get much better results with this than with Brightness and Contrast adjustments). (3) Throughout the author gives you her take on the various tools, even going so far as to tell you never to use tool X because tool Y always does a better job.
Bottom line: I learned a lot from this book, even though I've been using Elements for years. It's a good book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Truly The Missing Manual For PSE 6!
Comment: This book is another excellent publication for the Missing Manual series. It is more comprehensive than The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter), but doesn't feature step-by-step illustrations like that one. However, the comprehensive index, menu reference guide, and plenty of full color screenshots will answer any question about PSE in minutes. This volume is for PC only but there is also a volume for the Mac Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual
Customer Rating:
Summary: The book works for me, unfortunately, PSE 6, is now old news, PSE7 just came out!
Comment: I find it very helpful. The changes from 5 to 6 were enough to need some outside guidance and the Missing Manual did the trick.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Elements 6 manual
Comment: Don't even open Photoshop Elements 6 without having this manual by your side. Very comprehensive, and writen in an easy to understand way.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must-have for real understanding
Comment: I am so impressed to find this book goes into the 'nitty-gritty' of Elements, explaining how the various facilities work, not just giving examples and how to achieve them like so many of the other books on Elements do. But there is room for both type of book, just that I particularly like to understand how I'm achieving the result.
Summary: Good introduction to how and why to use Photoshop Elements
Comment: This book gives a balanced look at all the features of Photoshop Elements, without going into a lot of depth on any one topic. It is aimed at beginners. It has a reasonable amount of detail on the most common activities of enhancing photos and retouching photos, but these make up only a small part of the book. It tells you about many less obvious problems you may not have realized you had, such as color cast and perspective distortion.
This book is specifically for Windows, and there is a Macintosh version available: Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual I worked through the present book with the Macintosh program, and there's very little difference. Windows has an Organizer to manage your photos while the Macintosh program ships with Adobe Bridge, just like the full Photoshop CS3, but except for that you won't have any trouble using the same book on either platform.
The book is organized by task rather than by feature or tool. (An exception is a whole chapter on Layers.) The book is extensively cross-referenced; maybe TOO extensively. In the first half of the book I sometimes lost my place in the blizzard of cross-references and forgot what we were reading about. The chapter on selecting, although clear, was not well-integrated with the rest of the book. After reading it you know everything about selections except what they are good for.
There's a very thorough index, as we expect from the Missing Manual series. There were some puzzling gaps in the index. I suspected at times that it is an index of keywords; so if the book discusses a subject but doesn't call it by name then it might not show up in the index. For example, Perspective distortion is indexed, but only on p. 75 where the term is introduced and not p. 299 where the problem and its fix are discussed in detail. EXIF is not indexed even though it is discussed several places in the book.
The book goes beyond manipulating photos and tells you a good bit about what to do with your photos after your are happy with them. It goes into how to get high-quality printing, personalized merchandise, and web photo-sharing (although mysteriously Flickr is never mentioned).
Some Very Good Features in this book: (1) Calibrating your monitor: its importance and the news that colorimeter prices have come down sharply. (2) Using layers to fix major exposure problems (very short section but very useful; I get much better results with this than with Brightness and Contrast adjustments). (3) Throughout the author gives you her take on the various tools, even going so far as to tell you never to use tool X because tool Y always does a better job.
Bottom line: I learned a lot from this book, even though I've been using Elements for years. It's a good book!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Truly The Missing Manual For PSE 6!
Comment: This book is another excellent publication for the Missing Manual series. It is more comprehensive than The Photoshop Elements 6 Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter), but doesn't feature step-by-step illustrations like that one. However, the comprehensive index, menu reference guide, and plenty of full color screenshots will answer any question about PSE in minutes. This volume is for PC only but there is also a volume for the Mac Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac: The Missing Manual
Customer Rating:
Summary: The book works for me, unfortunately, PSE 6, is now old news, PSE7 just came out!
Comment: I find it very helpful. The changes from 5 to 6 were enough to need some outside guidance and the Missing Manual did the trick.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Elements 6 manual
Comment: Don't even open Photoshop Elements 6 without having this manual by your side. Very comprehensive, and writen in an easy to understand way.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A must-have for real understanding
Comment: I am so impressed to find this book goes into the 'nitty-gritty' of Elements, explaining how the various facilities work, not just giving examples and how to achieve them like so many of the other books on Elements do. But there is room for both type of book, just that I particularly like to understand how I'm achieving the result.