If you're ready to go from Photoshop competent to Photoshop enlightened, this is the place to turn. In these pages, revered Photoshop instructor Ben Willmore explains the whys behind the how's so that you can unleash Photoshop CS' full creative potential. In a friendly, easy-going style that's long on information and short on techno-babble, Ben explains the concepts, features, and techniques that promise to make a real difference in the way you use Photoshop CS. Complex concepts like curves and channels are made crystal clear, and features new to Photoshop CS--like the very cool PhotoMerge function for creating panoramic composite images, support for nested layers, and more--are covered in the depth they deserve. After a quick grounding in the tools, palettes, layers, and masks at the program's core, Ben gets into the real-world production techniques that make up the heart of this volume: sharpening scans, correcting and optimizing images, and more.