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Before I begin, I am a huge Sitepoint fan, love their books as I have developed a great collection of their books. More importantly they are great read that provide the right balance of technicality and easy reason. Wish I did work for them because they are that good. Now that my fanboyism is out of the way about the publisher, let’s talk about “Photoshop CS6 Unlocked” 101 Tips, Tricks, and Techniques” by Corrie Haffley. First thing I want to point out this this is the second edition of this book as this Adobe Photoshop book deals with getting the most out of Photoshop CS6. Even better, I own one of the Adobe CS6 suites and so this book has scored more points! Of course, I will point out and for those that do not know me; I am a pretty crappy graphic designer. I can handle my own in the sense I can attempt to make things look pretty and have an eye for what looks good and what doesn’t, but other than that, I am last person to hire or use for a million dollar project. However, with this book it provides me a guide to help learn basic techniques and spruce them up a bit and like every great designer you need to master the basics to become a better artist. Naturally, 101 tips, tricks, and techniques is not enough to get the most out of Photoshop because we all know this software is hundreds of features with thousands of different possibilities. As for who can use this book, I have to everyone, not because I am huge Sitepoint fan or Photoshop person but these 101 tips, tricks, and techniques attack all three levels of skill and patience because it uses tools like the Convert Point tool, feathering, masking etc. and I know that people spend months making complex designs in Photoshop. However, if you are looking to spruce up your photos or website, Photoshop does it as well. More importantly, it is a much bigger book in terms of size as it gave the author plenty of room to show clearly how the tips work and walking you through them. Or if you’re a Sitepoint junkie like me, I would pick it up, granted the book has purpose for me since I do have the software. On top of that you learn a lot and it refreshes your skills if you have been out of the graphic design game for a bit or don’t want to hire an expensive graphic designer.

I had designed this last month, after a long time out of the graphic design business and after an hour of working different angles and going through various Photoshop tools, I produce this.