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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An educational and interesting read with one irritating flaw, March 1, 2005
This review is from: Creative Photoshop Lighting Techniques (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback)
I will explain in simple terms the benefits and the single greatest shortcoming of Barry Huggins' book.
The Pros:
This book explains in detail the concepts of the varying sources and types of light.
It contains many thought-provoking tutorials, each of which explains how to render a specific lighting effect using Adobe Photoshop.
Each tutorial features a plethora of illustrative diagrams that show the original digital photograph, the final transformed photograph, and the various states of the photograph in between the two states. It frequently provides diagrams of how to edit Photostop's layer blending options and filters.
It is written in an easy-to-read, easy-to-follow format.
The Con:
The book is not accompanied by a CD-ROM that contains the digital photography that is employed in the book's tutorials. While this is an annoying inconvenience, all of the digital photography can be downloaded at no cost from the Ilex Press website (http://www.web-linked.com/PhotoLightingTech/uk/index.html). It is unfortunate that so many readers do not realize that these images are available online.
It is also important to note that this book was written for the users of Photoshop CS. While it is possible to complete many of the book's tutorials with older versions of the software, a number of layer blending modes (and their options) and a few filters that are described in the book are only available in the latest release of Photoshop.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a Bad Book, but..., April 25, 2005
This review is from: Creative Photoshop Lighting Techniques (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback)
This is not a bad book, but the downloaded images are of very low quality. It is difficult to see the before-and-after effect with such as low quality images.
I like the section on Creating Reflection and Converting Overcast Days and Sunny Days, but the chapters on Light Sources and Using the Lighting Effect Filter is not very completed. You might be disappointed if you were a photographer like myself looking for a book on improving outdoor/studio lighting on the photos. The book caters more to a digital artist who like to create rather dramatic lighting effects. The techniques such as adding fire, thunderbolt, refraction, and neon colors might make photos look "fake" to photographers who are interested in making a more subtle lighting improvement to their photos.
All in all, it is a pretty good book for someone who is interested in learning special lighting effect. I will not hesistate to give the book a better rating if the downloaded images are of higher quality.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very good: But they skimped., November 29, 2005
First off, if you are a seasoned PS user who understands light and color theory and color correction then you are probably not going to get much out of this book. If however, you are new to PS or still in the long learning process than you most likely will benefit from this book. It covers a wide range of lighting techniques that can be used to create just about any effect you need to.
There are two cons to this book however. The first being that a few of the effects could have been done better. For example; In one image the smoke and steam look like they were in fact painted into the image instead of being very light and wispy. But overall the effects are very well done and clearly explained. This leads us to con number two...the explanations. Yes I said they are clear. But read on.
The explanations, though clearly written, are sans digital file. I would have gladly paid another $5-$10 for the book if they had included a CD with all the images used in the examples. On the one hand the files are available at http://www.web-linked.com/PhotoLightingTech/uk/index.html but they do not even mention this in the book. But then the problem there is not all of the files are available for download. Most of them are but not all of them. To make matters worse they are low res images with a copyright mark in the middle of the image. So I find the publishers process very confusing.
At any rate this is still a good book for any PS user looking to push their skills further.
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