I'm back - with Matt Kloskowski...

If I have never made it clear before let me do so now, I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY, and I would be hard pressed to confess to my wife exactly how much I have (really) spent in pursuit of that obsession.

But as strongly as I feel about photography (and despite all of my Nikon tattoos), I also understand there are things in life that are more important.

Read the dedication page in Matt's new book "Layers" and you will learn of his depth as a person, what he holds as dear. The fact that he seems so grounded in reality, and what is truly important in life not only increased my respect for him as a person but also let me know I can trust his opinion in far less important areas like photo editing.

Now onto the book itself.

There are many things to like about the book (actually, there is absolutely nothing to dislike about it):

1. There are waaaay more pictures than words, so every step of every lesson is easy to follow.

2. Matt writes like he talks, very down to earth, very matter of fact, he is easy to follow and despite the fact that he has forgotten more about layers than most people will ever know, Matt is always talking to you, NOT down to you.

3. Just to make the lessons easy, Matt provides all the same images he uses in the book as a download, so you can follow along each and every lesson exactly as he lays it out. This is a great help, sometimes if you (specifically me) try to follow a tutorial using an image other than original, it will always look different, so you are never confident that you're getting the desired effect, or even grasping the concept correctly. So though providing the images may not seem like a big deal, it really is.

4. To help drive home the points you will also find online videos explaining what the easier (just what layers are) and the harder (type and shape layers) concepts are.

5. If it has to do with layers, you will find it contained within the pages of this book.

And because layers is the most important, most powerful aspect in Photoshop you owe it to yourself to get this book.

You use Photoshop because it is the best photo editing software available, if you are going to use the best, you might as well learn from the best.


And now, for something completely different:

As you may have noticed I have been absent from my blog for a week, as there as been a bug running through my house (literally) which has put me way behind on posts.

So I have some catching up to do and things should be coming at you fast and furious over the next week or so (product reviews, cool links, etc.) so be prepared.

It's good to be back among the living.