Pros: The print production-oriented Photoshop book.
Cons: Next to no coverage of topics beyond that.
Authors: David Blatner and Bruce Fraser 
Publisher: PeachPit Press, Berkeley
<http://www.peachpit.com/>
Page count: 704
Illustrations: Colour and monochrome
ISBN: 020135375X
RRP: US $44.99, CA $67.50,
AU $69.95, UK £28.50 approx.
The unquestioned bible of QuarkXPress, David Blatner's
The QuarkXPress Book also published by PeachPit Press,
is the best tome inexistence about the most-used print
publishing program. Or any such program for that matter. Real World Photoshop 5, co-authored by Blatner, is its natural companion, the book most likely to be seen nestling up alongside the former in design studios the world over. If not already, then it should be.
The reason is simple: amongst Photoshop's vast and many traits is the fact that it is the print production image editor par excellence, a status no other program has a achieved no matter how worthy. A production shop without its copy of Photoshop is a sorry place indeed, or at least one subject to some rather interesting daily challenges.
A LEGION OF CHALLENGE
And there are challenges enough on a daily basis in any print production facility, many of them often demanding a depth of knowledge of Photoshop way beyond the experience acquired by most individuals in their Photoshop-using lifetime.
It is not the run-of-the-mill tricks and skills you need resort to when a difficult image appears in the in-tray, but the far less obvious stuff we either stumble across by accident then keep in our mental filing cabinets for some future use, or that some late-night obsessive has sweated over long beyond the call of duty in order to really understand how to marshall those recalcitrant pixels, and herd those tones into order.
RESCUE AT HAND
David Blatner and his co-author Bruce Fraser have decades of experience betwen them in the business of electronic publishing. Fraser himself was an early adopter of Photoshop even before it was Photoshop, under the guise of BarneyScan XP. Both of them are respected authors and conference speakers, and their judgement can be trusted.
In the foreword, written by Photoshop Principal Scientist Mark Hamburg, Hamburg tells us that Real World Photoshop 5 is the book that "addresses the question 'How do I make my images look best when reproduced?'" He reminds us that "while Photoshop will do the grunt work..., it has to rely on your judgement about what changes to make." In summary he avers that Real World Photoshop 5 "will help you develop that judgement".
Having read not a few books on the topic of Photoshop now, I can only agree 100%. This is the production-oriented text that addresses the questions all the otherts do not, and that are certainly not even touched on in Photoshop's own manuals. With the benefit of Blatner's and Fraser's accumulated wisdom, you too will begin to hone your image-editing judgement.
