Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this book hoping to understand the holy grail of channels and what they could do for me in my everyday work with Photoshop. After reading this book I came away believing that for the most part one can do without understanding or using channels. I fault the author for this outcome who as one reviewer noted seemed to have come up with the idea of a book about Photoshop channels and then scraped the barrel for ways to actually use channels in Photoshop. There are a few good sections such as how to boost sharpening with channels but for the most part the examples given are of very obscure use in the real and practical world and i doubt I will ever have the need to use them. I also agree with the reviewer who noted that Mr. Kelby glosses over explanations in his examples so one would be hard pressed to use the technique on his/her own for their particular picture because he didn't explain his choice of settings, i.e. the big picture. In conclusion, there has been a market for years for a book on Photoshop that dealt with understanding the use of channels. This book did not meet my expectations and I came away only slightly more educated in the use of channels. It seems that Mr. Kelby saw a marketing opportunity and seized it without really giving his readers the quality book they deserve. As Mr. Kelby jokingly (?) says in his introduction, anyone who buys his book either has a burning desire to learn about an obscure topic like channels or throws their money around loosely. After reading the book, I now read this as a very interesting comment which may reflect Mr. Kelby's own feelings about his final product. One could do far batter with Dan Margulis' book on Lab color as one reviewer mentioned. Leave this book by Mr. Kelby alone unless you have money burning a hole in your pocket. And for those that gave this book high marks, ask yourself how much you are really going to use the info in his book and how much of it was just an interesting, abstract read. I think there are only two groups of people who appreciate this book- those beginners who are wowed by the examples because they don't realize how obscure and useless many of the techniques and examples are and secondly, those that use Photoshop as professionals to make a living day in and day out and who might actually come across an opportunity to use some of these techniques. I just think this book was a poor and lazy execution by Mr. Kelby and misses the mark for most Photoshopers.