Recommendation: buy this book.
I received this book as a review copy last year. It wasn’t a book that I had explicitly requested, so I let it sit for a few months before I read it.
This book will change the way that you use Photoshop.
Masking, the ability to highlight portions of an image for effects, is a necessary skill for any advanced Photoshop user. Compositing refers to combining elements from multiple images into a single artwork. While the title of this book might be dry and off-putting, the content is anything but.
The book is divided into sections, graduating from the introductory section, which anyone who has a basic familiarity with Photoshop can follow, all of the way up to very advanced compositing. Each section is divided into subsections which concentrate on a particular topic.
Topics are explained in clear prose and with many full-color illustrations and photographs, shown at each stage of editing. The author writes with the perspective of years of experience.