Book review: Layers by Matt Kloskowski

Layers are one of the most important features of Photoshop. In fact, without layers Photoshop would be pretty useless for many image editing tasks.
The problem for Photoshop beginners is, that layers can be pretty intimidating at first. There are many different ways to work with layers and the possibilites of what you can do with them are practically endless.
In many Photoshop books, layers are either explained without enough detail or in a too complicated way that leaves the reader wondering what this stuff is all about.

Recently I finished reading Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop’s Most Powerful Feature by Photoshop Guru Matt Kloskowski (author of great websites like Lightroom Killer Tips or Photoshop Killer Tips).
The book has about 250 pages and is writtin in a tutorial style. Matt describes many useful aspects of layers in a stey by step style with many examples. To get the most out of this, you should try the examples for yourself (the sample files are available for download) in front of your computer and Photoshop.
The book does not cover absolutely everything there is about layers (that would require much more than 250 pages) but it probably covers more than 95% you as a photographer are ever going to need.

The writing style of Matt is very readable and often also very funny. The book never gets boring (and this is something I rarely say about a technical book). The examples are easy to follow and after working through them, you should have a solid understanding of the power of layers. I certainly learned a lot by reading this book and found it the best explanation of layers I’ve come across so far.

Highly recommened!

Buy from amazon