Couldn't agree more. And with tools such as Photoshop, it's much more efficient to learn as you go after being able to understand enough to navigate around the tool and its basic associated terminology.
I thought similarly about those books. But I was proven wrong after I read Scott Kelby's Lightroom book. The added value was understanding one author's workflow and also knowing what all features exist. Of course, one might say we can just google for all the features of Lightroom - but I personally never did that and book helped me learn all the superset of features. After that, I never referred to the book - I just google about specific things, now that I know what is out there.
There was once a discussion about reading programming books and similar point was made about learning on the go. One HN'er pointed out that reading end to end helps to know what all exists. It resonated strongly with me and since then, when I start on a new topic - I make sure to read at least one book end to end.
Agreed. Any sufficiently complex tool needs a good explanation of it's workflow. I was using Photoshop occasionally for years, but when I saw how people use it in real life (the photoshop guys episodes were great) a lot of stuff clicked and made much more sense so it was way easier to use.
Definitely if it's not your job and it's just a hobby. Just like how a hobbyist coder can get by without reading any books or learning about design patterns, etc.
But if it is your job to use photoshop on a daily basis it's worth going deep into that tome.
It wasn't my intention to speak ill of good books on photoshop. I was just trying to think of an example. I'm aware that there are probably great books on Photoshop, and that probably most are.
