New Masters of Photoshop

Photoshop is the world''s favorite image-editing program. Available for both Mac and PC, it''s the de facto industry standard application for graphical manipulation, and therefore an essential tool not only for web designers, but also for photographers, printing professionals, and technical image editors. Produced by Adobe, Photoshop allows its users to execute all the processes necessary to create the most sophisticated graphics.Who is this Book for?Advanced Photoshop users who desire to emulate effects created by renowned professionals.Aspirant graphic artists who seek inspiration from the world''s top Photoshop designers.Anyone interested in seeing what Photoshop can do when pushed to its limits by the best in the business. What does the Book cover'friends of ED scours the world for the leading exponents of Photoshop technique in their field. This book is a showcase of cutting-edge Photoshop practice and theory, backed with essays on the influences and inspirations that lie behind the sharpest digital art and explorations of the philosophy and ethics of image manipulation in today''s media saturated world. The book deconstructs sophisticated and complex Photoshop graphics, providing motivation, skills and inspiration in equal parts.Adobe Photoshop is the only complete image-editing tool for both web and print graphics.Covers wide range of Photoshop techniques, including:Vector shape handlingImproved text handlingPDF workflow managementWeb optimizationLayer effects ReviewsCGI MagazineFebruary 2002Now this really is a ''graphics'' book. Not just a book about graphics, it''s a work of art in itself. It''s dedicated to the work of 19 Photoshoppers who represent the leading edge of digital image production. Each artist gets his or her own chapter and each chapter focuses on how these artists use Photoshop to achieve their own artistic visions.This is usually illustrated with respect to a particular image, detailing its creation as a walkthrough, but each chapter is also constructed as a manifesto for the artist and the page lay out and style constantly changes to reflect this. This is ultimately, a Photoshop textbook and all the files are included on the accompanying CD-ROM. However, it doesn''t look or read like a textbook, and this is the key to its success. In a market overflowing with Photoshop how-to''s it''s becoming increasingly difficult for publishers to differentiate their products, but in producing something that looks like an arthouse coffee-table book while still conveying heaps of relevant information, Friends of ED and ''content architect'' Jon Hill have been extraordinarily successful. Computer Arts5 star reviewDecember 2001This book is an awesome showcase of cutting-edge design currently taking place on and offline, featuring the work of many designers and illustrators whose images regularly adorn the pages of Computer Arts. You''ll see the designs excellently reproduced in full colour, alongside the artists explaining the techniques behind each project.If you liked Flash Web Design by Hillman Curtis, you''ll love this book. It''s not only an insight into the minds of the designers, it''s also a Photoshop masterclass. The CD-ROM contains, audio, video and textual interviews with the authors, as well as unflattened Photoshop files that can be dissected to reveal the hidden structure of various images. If you use Photoshop and want to progress your skills, this book will open your eyes. www.pixelsurgeon.com9 out of 10Review by Brett ArchibaldFor Friends Of Ed to be publishing a book on Photoshop may come as a surprise to a few people, because they only do Flash books, right? Wrong. They may have garnered their extremely excellent, and well-deserved reputation from their first few books on Flash, but since then have produced several other books dealing with other applications such as Director, Dreamweaver, and ColdFusion, as well as books on writing PHP and XML. But admittedly, one thing all these books have in common is that they deal with the scripting side of the design business, and in particular, the web side of things.So how does Friends Of Ed fare when it comes to tackling Photoshop, an application that has been around for a very, very long time, and that arguably every graphic designer in the world, of every skill level, and in every field of design already uses on a daily basis? Photoshop is a very different horse, aimed at the digital artist, not the programmer. There is no complex scripting involved. You start with a blank canvas or an existing image and you play around with it, altering it until you feel it''s finished. Unlike design that involves scripting, there''s no right way or wrong way to use Photoshop. It''s an art.With scripting, if you take a wrong turn somewhere, your project isn''t going to work, full-stop. In Photoshop, if you go left when you should be going right, you may end up with something completely different to what you were expecting, but it''s still an image, right? You can still export it as a JPEG and stick it up on your website if you like the look of it. So can Friends Of Ed really tell you anything you didn''t already know? You bet they can. Because, like their New Masters Of Flash books, this book is written by, and consists of contributions by people from all walks of design-life from around the globe, all masters in their field: some are known as artists, some are known as photographers, some are known as web designers, and some are known as simply designers in general. But they all have one thing in common: they are all masters of Photoshop, and I guarantee they can teach you a thing or two, no matter how much you thought you already knew. After all, Photoshop really is one of those programmes where you''re still discovering neat things every time you use it.For those who don''t already know, in this book, as with other F.O.E. books, each contributor is allocated one chapter each, divided into two main sections: in the first half of their chapter, they tell you a little about themselves, why they do what they do, who their influences are... Nothing extraneous, it all makes for a very interesting opener to the tutorial you''re about to be guided through.We begin with the familiar "Step one, create a new file" phrase, and are then taken through every step of how to re-create the contributor''s piece. As always, you don''t necessarily have to follow the tutorials to the letter, producing an exact replica of the image in the example (although you can if you wish, even using the exact same source image files as the author; as the accompanying CD contains all the source imagery, and the unflattened PSD files as well as audio, video, and written interviews with the authors) but rather, the book aims to demonstrate how these amazing images actually consist of a series of fairly simple procedures, and how you can use these same procedures to create similar effects of your own. Tools and features you''ve yet to use will suddenly become an invaluable and everyday part of your working process.Although this book is a Masters tome, it deals with the ''art'' of using Photoshop as opposed to the ''science'' of using the application (now there''s a contradiction in terms) and it doesn''t matter what skill level you are currently at, you can just dive straight in - everything is meticulously explained and is thoroughly easy to understand. If there''s a step in the process that you''re not particularly comfortable with, skip it. You''ll end up with a slightly different end result that still works a treat. Try leaving a line out of your code in a Flash file, and see if you still end up with a satisfactory result!Referring to the walkthroughs in this book as tutorials may actually be quite misleading, as that may imply that you should sit down in front of your computer with the book open in front of you, and a blank Photoshop canvas on your screen. Personally, the whole time I was reading this book I was as far awJens Magnus Karlsson is the author of 'New Masters of Photoshop', published 2003 under ISBN 9781590591932 and ISBN 1590591933.