I've flipped through a handful of books on Photoshop editing techniques and found most of them to be overly simplistic or too geared toward web publishing and Ebay. I was thrilled when searching on Amazon to learn several very useful and nonobvious tricks in the handful of pages of Kelby's book that were available online. So I bought it, in spite of the fact that it covers Photoshop 7 rather than Elements (which is what I own).

Having read the entire book, I don't entirely regret my choice. It is true that much of the content of this book is useless in Elements, since the necessary tools and menus just aren't available. However, there are enough useful techniques, and the presentation is given in such a straightforward "here's how to fix this problem" manner, that I believe I've received my money's worth.

The bottom line is that in a weekend of experimentation with the material presented in this book, I have gained a great deal of confidence in my Photoshop abilities, and the results are visible in my photos. (It doesn't hurt that I also recently purchased the NeatImage noise-reduction plug-in, which does a tremendous job.)