The Designer’s Guide to Astounding Photoshop Effects Review

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(More customer reviews)What a crime that this excellent design book's weakest, tackiest page is the only one that most people will ever see: its cover. I grabbed this book as a joke, because its awful first page promised a Saturday afternoon of unintended laughs and head-shaking at astounding misuses of Photoshop. But the joke was on me--there's a treasure buried under that Photoshop-ravaged front cover.
The Designer's Guide to Astounding Photoshop Effects begins with a brief but concise history of photo manipulation, which was first achieved with physical tools like airbrushes and blades. A heroic propaganda poster from the 1950s and a silly, contemporary Weekly World News cover (headlined "LIPOSUCTION FOR WORLD'S BIGGEST BABY" ) invoke completely different psychological responses and seem as though they have nothing in common, but both were achieved by the deliberate manipulation of reality and are landmarks in the evolution of the technique. It was a great idea to include this section, because most Photoshop books show no interest in the historic or psychological relevance of manipulation; they just get right to the showoff stuff. Because, let's face it, that's what most Photoshop users want.
The Designer's Guide... is geared more toward people who appreciate photo manipulation when it's done with style, grace and purpose than people who are looking to lens-flare their every document. There are some tips and they're all pretty good, but you have to accept the fact that most Photoshop wizards--like traditional magicians--have no intention of revealing the secrets behind their best tricks. So if you're like me, you'll find yourself doing a lot of backwards engineering to figure out how they created those astonishing effects.
But before attempting any of the tricks in this or any other Photoshop book, I think it's important to ask yourself, For what purpose?. A great Photoshop artist should use his skills only when necessary, and always with discipline. Because it's just too easy and tempting to get carried away, and wind up making the kind of mess they made with this cover.

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21st-century technology now allows graphic designers to create incredible images and designs that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to execute in previous years. With the introduction and evolution of Photoshop, today's designer can bring a completely different perspective to any image. The Designer's Guide to Astounding Photoshop Effects illustrates how every designer can use Photoshop techniques to create astounding visual effects. This book is a comprehensive tool for designers using any version of Photoshop. An inspiring variety of visuals are included, showcasing how masters of Photoshop have utilised certain techniques for astounding results. Step-by-step techniques and tips also help the readers learn how to make better use of Photoshop. Each case study focuses on innovative thinking in the field of photo creation and manipulation. Designers will also gain insight into the historical background and evolution of the digital age.

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Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an updated version of Ben Willmore's Adobe Photoshop CS2 tome. The CS3 revisions were written by Ben Long. (Not that that really matters) Both Mac and PC keyboard commands are explained. The screenshots are all Mac OS X. PC users need not worry however as the functionality is pretty much identical between the two platforms.
Pros:
Packed with useful easy to find information.
Written in plain english. You don't need to know all of the trade words.
The CD is loaded with pictures you can use to do the lessons. Also the CD contains 5 "Bonus" chapters. (To keep the weight of the book down they say)
The bonus chapers are:
Line art scanning
Channels
Shadows
Type and background effects
Resolution solutions
Cons:
When I bought this is was listed as a hardback book but it is not. It is paperback. (I see Amazon has changed their listing)
Most of the pictures printed in the book are too small to see what the author is trying to show you.
The book has the worst quaility of paper I've seen on an Adobe printed book. The cover pages are thinner than they should be and the ends of the interior pages are cupped as if someone rolled them in a tube. Quite maddning as they are not cupped in the same direction and it makes it difficult to read.
I give this book 5 starts for content and 3 stars for the poor way the book is bound.


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Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques has been completely updated to cover the new features in CS3. In a friendly, easy-going style that's long on information and short on techno-babble, Photoshop Hall-of-Famer Ben Willmore guides you through the concepts, features that will truly make a difference in how you use Photoshop every day. He takes you from blindly following step-by-step instructions to an in-depth understanding of how Photoshop works, cutting through the fat to focus on what he considers to be Photoshop's essential features. This full-color book delivers the content in three easily digestible sections: Working Foundations, Production Essentials, and Creative Explorations, and includes a companion CD with bonus chapters and practice images so you can quickly and easily apply the techniques covered throughout. Beginning with the working foundations of Photoshop--the basic tools, palettes, layers, and masks, you'll quickly move on to real-world production techniques, such as how to sharpen scans, correct and optimize images, and use the powerful Curves and Channels features to your advantage. Finally, you'll get to fully explore Photoshop's creative potential by blending and enhancing images, creating collages, retouching photographs, colorizing, and working with filters and layer masks. By the time you finish this book, your creativity and efficiency levels should soar and you'll start to feel like you finally "get" Photoshop.

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Hi-Fi Color For Comics: Digital Techniques for Professional Results Review

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(More customer reviews)I've always been interested in coloring my art in Photoshop like the pros do; as a self-taught artist, I'm constantly looking for the best resources to teach me what I need to know. Suffice it to say, I've bought quite a few books discussing computer painting and coloring. I've picked things up from them here and there, but I can honestly say that I have not found a book more comprehensive, more considerate of its audience, and better conceived than Hi-Fi Color for Comics. Before reading any further, however, please note that to get the best results from this book, you need to have Photoshop on your computer.
Hi-Fi Color for Comics is actually the best resource you can have if you're trying to learn how to do computer coloring for either comics work or just coloring your own black-and-white artwork - whether the art is inked or still in pencils. In this book you'll learn:
1. How to best scan your work and even how to best stitch together artwork that is too large to fit into one scan
2. How to 'flat' artwork (lay down the base colors)
3. How to render over the flats (the actual painting)
4. How to create color holds (turning black and white lines into colored lines for dramatic effects)
5. Special effects (making glows, fire effects, etc.) and making 'Helpers' (special image files that you can use in your artwork as starters for skies, grass, gravel, etc.)
6. Color Separation (in other words, how to finish your artwork's file and make it ready for print, etc.)
While this book would be great if it only outlined these subjects, it does something even greater: it contains a DVD-ROM that includes a large number of files. Here are just a few:
1. Photoshop Pre-Sets (color settings, brushes, and even shortcut scripts [which you will use liberally in the book's lessons] that you can install directly into Photoshop)
2. Examples of colored artwork, Helpers, etc.
3. 'Homework' assignments for stitching scanned artwork, flatting, etc.
Basically, the DVD-ROM allows you to practice what you learn right along with the lessons taught. You can open the files provided and dig right into coloring them to really get your feet wet in the coloring process right away. This is probably the best feature of the book. And, as a bonus, the pencils that you will color over are done by professionals and, in some cases, provided by top artists like Terry Moore and John Byrne.
Now, certainly, this book is not perfect: there are a number of typos, a couple of accidents in some of the lesson steps, and I found several instances where some lesson steps were accidentally left out (fortunately, they're simple enough that you will figure it out even if you're a novice). Also, those of you wanting to color your penciled artwork should note that, before performing the color separation Step 3 script to finish your artwork, be sure to Apply your line art or else your pencils would be almost completely washed out (the book fails to mention this problematic issue, I discovered).
While it has its faults, Hi-Fi Color for Comics remains the very best resource out there for those interested in learning the comic book style of computer coloring. It is a tremendously well-thought-out book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If this book is your speed, you may also want to consider another helpful volume, with has another approach to coloring, Digital Manga Workshop: An Artist's Guide to Creating Manga Illustrations on Your Computer. Enjoy!

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This is an exciting and complete instructional package starting with the basics and progressing through step-by-step demonstrations that take you from line art to full, awe-inspiring colour.It features instruction on equipment, scanning, setting up pages, colour theory, flatting, rendering, special effects, colour holds, colour separations, and even details on the business of becoming a professional colourist.The bonus CD-Rom, includes Photoshop tools and actions that pro colourists Brian and Kristy Miller use to streamline their colouring work, plus sample Photoshop files so that readers can work along with the demonstrations.

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Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Contemporary Techniques and Tools for Digital Representation in Site Design Review

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(More customer reviews)Bradley Cantrell and Wes Michaels have authored a concise and beautifully illustrated book. They know their stuff and it shows. The book presents a detailed overview of digital methods, graphics and tools used in landscape architecture and related design professions. The clearly written content encompasses varying software and graphic. The images are excellent representatives of the graphics and methods the book's content advocates.
The book focuses on the creation of graphics type and not just on specific graphic programs. The authors took into account the flexibility in which many designers create representative graphics. This smart approach allows the book to center on the creation of rich representations of the landscape, but still delve in to the specifics of the programs used by design students and professionals.
Each chapter and section demonstrates varying techniques. From using Photoshop to create sections and plan graphics, to scaling and working with aerials. The authors demonstrate how to integrate CAD with Adobe Illustrator in an easy but important workflow. The book reviews a variety of 3D modeling programs including 3D Max and SketchUp and the type of graphics these programs can generate. One favorite chapter includes a step-by-step tutorial on creating Photoshop Perspective Collage. And this is just a sampling of what the book contains. The comprehensive nature of the book is phenomenal.
The authors move the discussion beyond just `how to' and discuss digital theory. Of particular note is a dialogue on how current digital methods are directly informed by the tradition of ink, pen and paper which was the backbone of graphic representation for decades. Framing the book's methods in the long tradition of hand-drawn illustrations emphasizes why design practitioners must read and use this book; it's a milestone in bringing the design community up to date to the level that design should be represented and practiced.
The book's approach and theories on digital presentation will elevate professionals and students practicing landscape architecture and related fields.
Daniel Tal, author of Google SketchUp for Site Design: A guide to Modeling Site Plans, Terrain and Architecture

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For a hundred years, pencil, pen, markers, and watercolor have been the principal tools of representation for landscape architects and urban planners. Today, those hand-powered aids have been replaced by computers and Computer-aided design (CAD). Digital Drawing for Landscape Architects bridges the gap between the traditional analog and the new digital tools and shows you how to apply timeless concepts of representation to enhance your design work in digital media.
Building on the tried-and-true principles of analog representation, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture explores specific techniques for creating landscape design digitally. It explains the similarities and differences between analog and digital rendering, and then walks you through the steps of creating digitally rendered plans, perspectives, and diagrams. You'll explore:
Computing Basics

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Digital Painting Techniques: Practical Techniques of Digital Art Masters (Masters Collection) Review

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(More customer reviews)Digital Painting Techniques is a compilation of tutorials written by various talented digital artists. It is broken up into eight chapters with roughly five to seven tutorials apiece, and a gallery at the end. The physical book itself is well bound so that when open it lies flat for easy reference while you work.
The chapters are: Custom Brushes, Speed Painting, Matte Painting, Creatures, Humans, Environments, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, and Complete Projects.
The tutorials, with the exception of a few, use Photoshop; the noted exceptions also use Painter. (In the final chapter, one artist also uses Artweaver and Gimp, while another uses Cinema 4D. But for sake of argument, assume this is a Photoshop digital painting book.) And some of the tutorials also come with assets available to download from the book's website.
As for the content, let's say that some tutorials were more thorough and useful than others. While the visuals that went alongside them were stunning, a few of the brush tutorials amounted to little more than how to save a new brush in Photoshop. But the remaining brush tutorials delved into the why and how of creating a custom brush for useful application and saving time, then illustrated its use.
Some of the subsequent tutorials were vague; one example step stating "use a textured brush"--with no indication or example of the texture, only a screenshot of the elapsed painting. Luckily that didn't happen too often.
Most of the tutorials provided screenshots of software settings, brushes used, and picture progress with clear explanations. Creature Concept 101 by Mike Corriero, Paint Luscious Lips by Anne Pogoda, The Human Face by Nykolai Aleksander, and The Environmental Series by Carlos Cabrera immediately spring to mind.
Finally, the book could have used another round of edits for consistency, especially in reference to software terminology. Also, some of the page layouts made it difficult to locate referenced figures throughout (i.e. see Fig 4, which would be an inset of another figure on a previous page). Nothing too egregious, but something to be aware of.
Overall, this is an excellent resource for digital artists looking for inspiration and to learn some new techniques. It comes with the caveat, however, that this is not a book for beginners; you won't find tutorials for preparing a digital canvas, mimicking paint consistencies, or color blending. So while this book won't replace a good foundational book on digital painting, it would make a great supplement.

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Discover the tips, tricks and techniques that really work for concept artists, matte painters and animators. Compiled by the team at 3dtotal.com, Digital Painting Techniques, Volume 1 offersdigital inspiration with hands-on insight and techniques from professional digital artists. More than just a gallery book - within Digital Painting Techniques each artist has written a breakdown overview, with supporting imagery of how they made their piece of work.Beginner and intermediate digital artists will be inspired by the gallery style collection of the finest examples of digital painting from world renowned digital artists. Start your mentorship into the world of digital painting today with some of the greatest digital artists in the world and delve into professional digital painting techiques, such as speed painting, custom brush creation and matte painting. Develop your digital painting skills beyond the variety of free online digital painting tutorials and apply the most up to date techniques to your digital canvas with Digital Painting Techniques for Animators.* Mentor with some of the greatest digital artists in the world and delve into professional digital painting techiques, such as speed painting, custom brush creation and matte painting. * Inspiration and technique in one digital painting book! Be inspired with a gallery style collection of the finest examples of digital painting from world renowned digital artists and explore the step by step tutorials that explain the digital painting techniques.* Develop your digital painting skills beyond free digital painting tutorials and apply the most up to date techniques to your digital canvas with this complete guide to digital painting.

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