Customer Reviews

Creative Photoshop CS4: Digital Illustration and Art Techniques

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This 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.

When I taught Photoshop I told students it was the "Swiss Army Knife" of applications - lots of different users, who knew their part of the program very well but had no idea how to work the rest of the commands.

There are people who make their photographs look better, scan operators and professional photographers, people who remove unwanted boyfriends and husbands from pictures of happy occasions, and those that can take a cracked picture taken over fifty years ago and make it look like it was taken yesterday. I taught all these methods, but there was the equivalent of a locked door between us and those people who created artwork without using any pre-existing photographs or drawings.

That door has now been pretty much kicked open with Derek Lea's Creative Photoshop books where he reveals step-by-step instructions for making his own pictures. Lea's artwork is often unsettling (like the Woman/Octopus on the cover), but if you ignore that you'll find the whole book full of techniques that it's hard to find anywhere else.

I'd rather have a book that shows you how to make illustrations that are current, rather than someone giving you baby steps by showing you general principles. We may never have Lea's visions, but working through this book will give you a huge amount of techniques.

This book claims to be for Intermediate to Advanced digital artists, rather than just Photoshop users. For most, it may look intimidating, but just about every step is in there, and if you're the sort of person who knows the basics of Photoshop's features, you can work your way through. Lea helps by adding advice on problems you might have, and it's obvious he's given deep thought on how people become digital artists.

This book is published by Focal Press, who have a knack of bringing out books that show you unusual ways of using programs. I'm a fan of Martin Evening's books on Photoshop for photographers, and in Lea's book you get the same feeling that you're looking over the shoulder of a master of the game.

So, if you're a Photoshop user that is willing to spend time on facets that you've probably not looked at before, this could be the book for you. I'm sure you'll never look at Photoshop the same way again.

I am giving this book three stars because I like it.
But I can't give it five stars like most of the folks here.

Art style sets the tone for an art book. For that reason you only buy a manga art book if you aspire to draw big eyes, spikey hair and cat-human hybrids. This book has a similar self-imposed limitation. It feels like I am looking at the catalog of what Tim Burton's Tattoo Shop would look like...if such a thing existed.

The author goes out of the way to exaggerate the grotesque and the bizarre, and while this does make for some interesting and helpful projects, these aren't images I would place in my own portfolio.

Note this book is not a "Let's create art in photoshop" manual. It is project based, and assumes you created your initial art someplace else. Photography, pastel, or finger-paint. In other words these projects are using Photoshop as though it were nothing more than a very complex filter for art that already exists.

There are some useful techniques I haven't seen in any other book or forum, so you do want this in your hands for a week or two. I suggest getting it from the local library and saving yourself a few beans. Page for page ROI is a negative.

Most of my background in Photoshop was previously around photography and editing for photographic effect. You know, the typical color, sharpness, crop, dodge and burn type of activities. As I started doing more photography and more Photoshop I found out that I was getting pretty comfortable with Photoshop as a tool, but wanted a book to help me start taking the next step. That step being adding creative elements of design into the photography. This books shows how to make that step and it's content is directed towards the moderate to advanced Photoshop user. It really open up techniques like shape layers, illustrations (without Adobe Illustrator!), various art effects, brush and sketching effect (more purposely controlled and applied than filters with masks). It also has introductory chapeters into 3D (with CS4) and surreal effects to take you to the true next level of creativism.

I'm a good photographer, but still a beginner in creative design and have found this book a good way to learn the tools and as an engine to introduce some creative ideas to apply. I highly recommend the book if you also a photographer looking to bridge into creative design and art development.

Take note, when the subtitle indicates "Illustration" it means it, the vast majority of this book is focused on art which you would *Create* with hand drawn sketches, Adobe Illustrator files or pre-existing assets and then *Digitally Enhance* in Photoshop for after effect purposes. Since Photoshop is not a vector illustrating tool at heart, if you are looking for the creation process you likely need to look at software like Xara Xtreme (my personal favorite) or Adobe Illustrator. The photo on the cover is less indicative of the majority of the content - it is generally not photorealistic art - but instead a heavy hand of cartoons, retro art, stencils, graffiti, screen printing and manipulating scanned sketches. One should definitely check out the table of contents to ensure they know the agenda for the book as I don't think the cover art or title necessarily convey this strongly.

The book itself if beautiful, with plenty of high quality screenshots, examples and step-by-step instructions. Although it is more tailored to CS4, one could apply this to CS3 vary easily, and from a theory standpoint - to other applications as well. Most of the examples are thoroughly unique and not something ,which at the time of writing, seemed to be covered in equal quality or depth from online / free tutorials. As a desk reference this makes it particularly valuable.


Top 3
- Exposed the power of adjustment layers and how seemingly simple backgrounds add to the authenticity of the project
- Doesn't waste your time on Photoshop 101 skills (this is intermediate to advanced)
- Describes more archaic digital art techniques which are less `web' and `corporate' oriented

Bottom 3
- Sometimes steps are missing, but never to the extent they would compromise a solid outcome
- Makes incorrect references to a CD, although all digital assets are online
- Some of the examples push the envelope beyond what Photoshop is good at and end up suffering quality wise - the Graffiti example in particular seemed like C- quality.

I studied graphic design when Photoshop first appeared on the Mac. As most Photoshop users know, it can be a very overwhelming program to learn. There weren't many guides available to help an aspiring Illustrator like me. I later returned to study Design and was fortunate to have a professor who knew enough about Illustration and Photoshop to teach me the basics. Still, most guides offered cookie cutter projects and fake looking effects. Other books showed the potential of Photoshop with beautiful illustrations, but offered little information on how they accomplished the final results. I wanted a book to show me how to take my sketches and turn them into pieces of digital artwork in a clear and concise manner. Derek Lea's book is just what I was looking for. I can tell that Derek was an artist that truly learned how to harness Photoshop's power and use it to his benefit. I was intimidated by the computer and stayed away from it for years, but now I treat it as a different tool to accomplish my artistic goals. I feel that most users can take the advice from each project and apply it to their own work. Derek doesn't want his readers to draw or paint like him, but to learn and create their own projects by getting comfortable in the world of Photoshop. The book is set up in a nonlinear way, so you can jump from project to project. You will have to be somewhat familiar with Photoshop to navigate through the projects though. I can't speak highly enough of all the useful information in this book. You will be a better digital artist after completing the projects in this book.

Written in an easy to follow "workshop" style manual, Creative Photoshop C24 gives you the tools to understand the "whys and hows" of photoshop to get it to perform like the creative tool that it is without excessive technical jargon. Some photoshop books provide inspirational images without explaination and other photoshop books provide lengthy technical explainations without inspirational images. This book is the right mix of technique and inspiration.

A solid five stars.

I am a professional graphic designer. In today's busy workplace, it is very difficult to find the time to be creative and learn new techniques, so books like this are extremely helpful. "Creative Photoshop CS4: Digital Illustration and Art Techniques" is packed with amazing tips and techniques for the digital artist/photographer. If you are armed with this book, Photoshop (the book's lessons are backwards compatible) and a decent computer, you can unleash your creative genius and create some serious art with the fun and helpful exercises.

This really isn't a beginner's Photoshop book, and certainly not a photography "how to" book, so you will make better use of the content if you already have at least a basic working knowledge of Photoshop before delving in here. It is also not a photo retouching book, but a book for serious digital artists.

The exercises are clearly spelled out and fairly easy to follow. The use of layers, shapes, painting and effects are all great tools for any designer's toolbox. I highly recommend this book.

Derek Lee's cover was what got me interested in his book. This book is more about the creative side, than the nuts and bolts of Photoshop. A lot of his imagery has that "lowbrow" art side, and seems to focus more on illustration than photography, although he incorporates photography into his illustrations.

Be forewarned that prior knowledge and experience with the pen tool is a good idea, and you'll not get much in the way of instruction about where this or that tool resides. Lee expects you to be an intermediate user, and actually begins each chapter showing you a level of difficulty you can expect, and the focus of each chapter. Well done.

I'm thoroughly enjoying making my way through the book. I particularly like some of his suggestions regarding setting up your color swatches, using blending modes to incorporate unusual elements into your photos, and his use of gradients to seamlessly blend those elements. I also like the fact that if you see a style of something, you don't need to "get" to that chapter. The book is designed so that you can explore any chapter without having to do everything that lies beforehand. This is a worthwhile purchase for anyone interested in thinking about the artistic/creative possibilities within photoshop.

Like many books in its class, Creative Photoshop CS4 provides abundant examples and detailed walkthroughs of a good chunk of the Photoshop's powerful features. What sets this book apart though is that the techniques, as well as the art used to demonstrate them, are actually interesting and motivating. Too many books in this genre, though the do a good job on the software, present examples or projects that it's hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to do. This book has the opposite effect: some of the projects illustrated here are actually inspiring.