Photoshop CS6: Visual QuickStart Guide/ Elaine Weinmann & Peter Lourekas

006.686 WEI

Very concise; fully illustrated. Organised by features.

Some handy tips I picked up:

p.205. Clip Adjustment layers
Hold down the ALT/ OPTION key; click between the line of two layers to clip/ unclip them.

p.208/ 209. On using the Histogram panel
How to read the histogram; what's well balanced (basically must cover the graph range), under-exposed (slanted towards left with gaps on the right); overexposed (slanted towards right with gaps on the left); shadow pixels clipped (graph is like under-exposed but raised all the way on the right); detail loss (where there are comb-tooth like gaps between the graph).

p.264. Photomerge command/ feature (via Bridge)

p.336 Puppet Wrap command
Edit > Puppet Wrap (use SHIFT/ ALT/ OPTION keys for effect)

p.377 Transform (e.g. detach) effects
After creating the effects, right-click the Effects listing on the layers panel, then "Choose Layer" from the context menu.