Photoshop Masking & Compositing Review

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Photoshop Masking & Compositing ReviewEvery book I've read by Katrin Eismann has been very good. Even so, This one was better than I expected.
Katrin has designed the book so it could be used as a textbook for Photoshop teachers. There are files to go with the book and its lessons available for download over the internet. You can use these files to do the lesson projects she has throughout the book. This was true with her book on photo restoration and retouching, as well.
As the title suggests, she gives excellent information on making masks in Photoshop. She gives you the theory, so you can better understand how masks work, and then gives you lots of techniques for creating masks.
Often, masks are required to extract a person or an object from the background of a photo, so you can composite it into another photo. She gives excellent tutorials on doing this, including how to preserve hair and fine detail. We all know how much more real a composite looks when you are able to capture those stray hairs. It's all about selecting those fine details with out selecting the unwanted stuff. She gives you several selection strategies that you can use in different situations.
She also gives you strategies for using the pen tool to create complex paths and combine paths. And there is a selection technique called the "multi-pass" technique (page 300).
In the compositing section, she devotes the first part to image execution, showing you how to design your photo shots for compositing. And gives some good advice in "Photographic Essentials."
I was blown away by a project she showed in which some books were composited in with buildings, matching perspective to make them fit perfectly. See page 416 for the final result, and read the pages preceding it to see how it was done. I was even more impressed with another project that begins on page 431. In that project, there is an ordinary photo of two people fencing in the woods at a medieval faire. The end of the project results in a dramatic photo with beautiful lighting.
She also covers alternatives for achieving results, such as sharpening a photo with High Pass instead of Unsharp Mask. This is a great book for someone who wants to improve their Photoshop skills. You probably should be an intermediate level user, able to understand all of the basics of Photoshop if you want to use this book.Photoshop Masking & Compositing Overview

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Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature (2nd Edition) Review

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Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature (2nd Edition) ReviewI'll be honest, Photoshop has scared me to death for quite awhile. I love digital photography, but I always felt the whole post-processing end of it was way too complicated and would take me years to learn. A friend of mine would take photos that I had taken and work his PS magic on them, and I would thank him, not really knowing what he did to correct exposure, color, etc. I picked up Photoshop Elements 6, but I still never really understood the whole layers and masks thing, although I loved the editing aspects of it.
But then I saw an episode of PhotoshopUser TV on the web and was introduced to some of the tips, tricks and new features of Photoshop CS5. All of it explained in detail, with some good doses of humor thrown in, by Matt Kloskowski, Scott Kelby and Dave Cross. They made Photoshop less intimidating and much easier to comprehend.
So I got a copy of Photoshop CS5 for myself, determined to learn this program and start using it to its potential. I was all set to purchase the first edition of Matt's Layers book, but he mentioned that he was revising it with new emphasis on CS5, so I decided to wait and get the newest edition.
Matt has a great style of teaching the use of layers in Photoshop. Another reviewer mentioned that Matt wrote in a "juvenile" style, but I found it refreshing and helped make what can be a dry subject interesting. Watching Matt on the web, or attending one of his seminars, will show you that he writes as he speaks. He doesn't talk down to his audience and makes sure you know the subject matter before he moves on. Several times in the book, while demonstrating a process or procedure, he will instruct you to perform a basic step (whether it's a keyboard shortcut or navigating to a certain toolbar) that he talked about in an earlier chapter, that helps to complete the current project. This is just a simple repetition technique that makes those steps come naturally to you.
The book is logically set up to start off a new user with the basics of layers, and quickly moves into blending layers and the use of layer masks to enhance your images. The book is NOT a Photoshop tutorial showing you what every brush or menu option does. Matt assumes you have a good base of knowledge on how to navigate around the program toolbars and menus. He gives you a good foundation of knowledge in the early chapters that he builds upon as you go through the book.
New to this edition is the "Advanced Layer Blending and Compositing" chapter that Matt has added for this edition. Again, while this is about more advanced techniques, Matt makes it easy to understand, and most of all, fun to learn!
In addition to the information in the book, there is a web link given where there are more video tutorials and pictures that you can download, so you can work on them alongside the turorials in the book.
Overall, I would strongly recommend this book for the person just starting out in Photoshop and who wants to understand how layers are the building blocks of all images that are edited in it. As with any book, some of the more advanced users may not get a lot of new information out of it, but there may be a new tip or trick that they might have not have come across before.
Great purchase!Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature (2nd Edition) Overview

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