This New Riders book was written for photographers using Photoshop CS2 and beyond, it says on the cover. The authors are well-known experts Sean Duggan, Barry Haynes and Wendy Crumpler. The book starts with a voyage through Photoshop’s interface. Very rapidly, though, you’ll get a bath of Photoshop techniques that go well beyond the basics.

Photoshop Artistry is a real tutorial. It contains exercises at the end of each chapter, and the included DVD-rom includes all the tutorials with their images. But this book is also nice to have at hand, for when you’ve forgotten how to do something in Photoshop that you don’t often do anyway.

The book is also a great reference on colour choice, colour management and camera RAW --and the relationship between the three is covered in great depth. Photoshop is no longer an island, and Photoshop Artistry acknowledges that fact by spending a good deal of attention to Adobe Bridge and the way you can use it to organise photos more efficiently.