It has been awhile since I have looked at a Deke McClelland book. I have always been a fan of Deke with his sense of humor making not only the training videos he did for Total Training fun but his books a lot of fun to read as well. But, even more important than that his books were always very well written, very thorough and covered not only the basics but also some of the more advanced techniques as well.
                            
Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one Front Cover is just such a book. While this book is not as large as some of the other books Deke have done in the past, it is however a very streamlined, thorough and yes fun book to read and work through. Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one is not in my opinion a reference book, it is more of a tutorial book designed to get a newbie to Photoshop CS3 going and up to speed and to help a more advanced novice learn some of the features that he/she may not use that often. It is also a great choice for a Photoshop veteran to use to get up to speed with all of the new things in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 one-on-one is a full color soft cover book. It also includes a DVD with tutorial videos on it. Anytime a section of the book has an accompanying video tutorial you will see a DVD icon and I have to say there are a large number of them throughout the book, also on the DVD are any needed lesson files. Besides the video tutorials the book is loaded with Extra Credit and Extra Credit Extreme boxes that have suggestions on places where you can get additional information, most point you to the Lynda.com site, you do a get a free 1 week trial with the purchase of the book after that to access the Extra Credit and Extra Credit Extreme sections will cost you money. Personally, I don't think this is right, you have already paid for the book and if they are going to include site URL's to further information then access to those resources should be included in the price of the book otherwise it is like spending $49.99 on a advertisement for Lynda.com and their for cost services. This doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth.

At the end of the chapters is a "What Did You Learn?" section that covers the key concepts you should have learned from the chapter, this is done in the form of a match up test that has you match a concept with a description. Answers are included on the bottom of the page upside down. There are also pearls of wisdom boxes that offer bits of useful information as well as side articles on understanding how things work, for example "How the Auto Command Work", page 49.

Outside of the limited access to the extra resources on the Lynda.com site the book is very well done, easy to read and even fun and it covers all of the important areas of Photoshop CS3 from color correction, to masking, to filters and text and styles and more. It is very complete and nicely done.

Lessons:

Lesson 1: Open and Organize
Lesson 2: Highlights, Midtones, and Shadows
Lesson 3: Correcting Color Balance
Lesson 4: Making Selections
Lesson 5: Crop, Straighten, and Size
Lesson 6: Paint, Edit, and Heal
Lesson 7: Creating and Applying Masks
Lesson 8: Focus and Filters
Lesson 9: Building Layered Compositions
Lesson 10: Text and Shapes
Lesson 11: Styles and Specialty Layers
Lesson 12: Printing and Output