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Creative Photoshop CS4: Digital Illustration and Art Techniques ReviewThis is a project-based book for fairly experienced Photoshop users. It is not general Photoshop information or instruction for the uninitiated. It also seems to be geared to a niche category of designers, not the more conventional art, advertising, or photography market to which I belong. What follows are my subjective interpretations of the book's content.
The good points:
* Clearly explained thought process and workflow supported by equally clear and logical screen shots of Photoshop dialogs and, particularly, detailed layer stacks (so necessary to understand the sequence and the logic).
* The author is a more than a merely competent artist. His original art (sketches, cartoons, line drawings, photographs) are the basis for the projects in the book.
* The author knows how to teach. Not every artist or technically-skilled author knows how to put himself in the place of a reader with less knowledge or abilities and explain the how's and why's of the process.
* Originality in the use of Photoshop for unusual purposes. While you might, personally, not share his artistic vision, the projects do open your imagination to ideas you might not have otherwise considered and which can be made applicable to your own taste and interpretations. Excellent as a launching pad for your own brand of originality.
* Web downloads for the project materials, etc. It helps to do things his way first using the exact same illustrations shown in the book before going off in your own tangent with your own materials.
* Excellent organization. Each chapter/project begins with a synopsis explaining the project, what he hopes to achieve, how he will proceed, and the purpose of the exercise. I wish other Photoshop books would do this.
* Although a certain proficiency in Photoshop is assumed and probably required (i.e. knowledge of paths, pixel and vector masks, layers, selections, etc.) an experienced user can follow the text and screenshots to complete all the project steps.
* Excellent index and general organization.
* Excellent marginal notations: practical, on-point, clear, and just plain interesting.
* Probably the most original Photoshop book I've ever come across.
The not so good:
* I don't particularly care for his type of art (based on the genre of graffiti, tattoo, aliens, eyeballs, etc.). This is a problem because it is the art that sets the mood and 90% of the book is art I cannot relate to. Once I got past this, of course, I realized the actual techniques can be successfully adapted to any other graphic elements, but I wish there had been greater variety in the presentation.
* Our approaches to photography are polar opposites. He takes a photograph of a generic, middle-age woman and adds about 20-years worth of lines and wrinkles; sagging skin and chins; bags under the eyes and, possibly, a couple of terminal illnesses. I would take the same photo and try to make her skin smoother, her eyes brighter, and try to take 5-10 years off and an equal number of pounds. (Of course, what he does is so much more difficult than what I do that I might be displaying my jealousy here). Seriously, I did find this chapter extremely interesting and keep coming back to examine again how he did things. I don't plan to use it myself (unless I get really mad at someone!) but as an exercise in reverse engineering it is priceless.
* You have to keep in mind that this is not, strictly-speaking, a "Photoshop" book. Photoshop serves as a supplement to or support for the original art created in another medium (hand-drawn then digitized art, or art created digitally in Illustrator or some other vector drawing program). You either have to have access to or be able to create the art, then bring it into Photoshop and go on from there. (There are two exceptions, in which the projects are based on photographs.)
* Plain Photoshop is used for most projects, but for the 3-D project, Photoshop CS4 Extended is required.
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