"Advice from Down Under" might be an appropriate subtitle for this book, since it was written by two seasoned Australian photographers – and both are, unsurprisingly, beta testers for the Adobe Photoshop product line. Their prose is peppered with non-U.S. spellings and phrases such as "colour," "whilst," and "realize," but this is not distracting in the least. After all, these people have used the English language a bit longer than Americans!

This is a book that takes you from step 1, including which computer platform might work best for someone in the industry (Mac is the suggestion, since it provides the best compatibility with other members of the creative community, who largely work on Macs), all the way to sophisticated techniques for creating type effects and complex photomontages. Something I picked up from the introductory section is that when working on very large images (mine are typically in the 300-400MB range, with multiple layers), it's best to have a scratch disk that is physically separate from the drive on which the file and Photoshop application reside – something I suspected, but could never confirm until now.

Divided into comprehensive sections designed to be followed in a linear fashion, this would make (and probably is used in this manner in Australia) an excellent textbook and study guide for any Photoshop class. There is also a website that provides additional information, downloadable work files, and reference links (photoshopessentialskills.com).

The layout, printing, and even paper choice are superb—this is a high quality volume that is an excellent primer for the beginning user who aspires to learn the full capabilities of this flagship Adobe application, or the advanced user who would like to add a few new tricks to his Photoshop bag.