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33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Groundbreaking Book about Digital Art, March 9, 2010
This review is from: Digital Art Revolution: Creating Fine Art with Photoshop (Paperback)
Okay, so here's the deal: I have absolutely no artistic talent. Seriously, none. I can't even put a stick figure on paper with straight lines. However, all that might change. This new book, "Digital Art Revolution," has inspired me to start dabbling in the fascinating field of digital art.
What is digital art? From what I can gather, the author views it as another tool to artistic expressiveness, like a paint brush or a canvas. Digital art is not just about making web designs (although it certainly is that, to some extent.) Rather, digital art is anything you want it to be. It is a medium that is only limited by what you can imagine.
This book gets you on the path to thinking, acting and being a digital artist, a place where a simple scanned picture can turn into an artistic masterpiece. Like any new art medium, critics will probably call digital art low-brow, mindless nonsense. This book frees us from such snobbery and invites us to embark on an artistic journey that is only limited by our imagination.
If you have ever seen any of the author's digital art pieces, you'd quickly see the potential for digital art as a legitimate medium for the finest of fine arts. Digital art allows for a wonderful form of expressiveness that traditional mediums simply cannot touch. For instance, with digital art, you can take an ordinary photograph of a celebrity and turn it into a wild fantasy world with digitally-added nude fairies and a blazing inferno background. Or you can take a picture of fruit and flowers and digitally alter it to create a seascape that serves as a microcosm for the Universe. Or you can turn a photo of an old shoe into a branded logo for your firm. Or whatever you want.
This groundbreaking book is both practical and enjoyable to read, a real mix of engagement and how-to. I don't know of any book like it on the market, as it appeals to newbies like myself and experienced digital artists who are seeking new creative avenues to express themselves. And who knows: it might even make an artist out of me some day!
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Appreciation of Art in the "Digital Revolution", March 17, 2010
This review is from: Digital Art Revolution: Creating Fine Art with Photoshop (Paperback)
I originally got this book with the sole intention of picking up some new tricks using Adobe Photoshop. After reading the book, I not only learned a lot of useful Photoshop techniques, but because of the author's great ability to educate and instruct, was also introduced into appreciating art. The author was able to educate me on some basic art concepts and instruction. Beauase of this, it now takes my photographs to a new level. I now view a lot of my Photoshop enhanced photographs as a very creative form of art. I also have a new level of respect for other "Photoshopped" pieces as artwork. This book is a great work of instruction in Photoshop techniques as well as introducing an appreciation of art in the "digital revolution". Great book!
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent - with some reservations., October 26, 2010
This review is from: Digital Art Revolution: Creating Fine Art with Photoshop (Paperback)
This is an excellent primer on creating digital fine art, but it has some shortcomings. On a purely personal level, I found the author's preening irritating. By the same token, he is describing, in many instances, his own artwork or his own teaching style. Minor issue and while it was irritating enough to warrant mention, it does not detract from the usefulness of the book.
What does detract is the superficiality of the instruction. Apparently Ligon intends or hopes his book will be used as school text. By my count, Ligon attempts to discuss 71 separate topics, most involving the use of Photoshop, in 247 pages, about two-thirds or so of which are primarily text. That's not a lot of space and it does not permit extensive discussion of any single topic. As a result, an 11 page section ostensibly on masking very briefly covers only a few masking techniques and tries to include five other subjects as well, including sharpening. Very large books have been devoted to the subject of sharpening. In short, Ligon is providing a whirlwind tour of Photoshop. This may work for a paint-by-numbers environment, but for the student who is engaged in solo learning, it may be troublesome.
Another critical skill given short shrift is the pen tool. Ligon devotes a bit more than two text shy pages to this topic. The pen tool is essential any serious Photoshop user and is notoriously difficult to master for many, perhaps most, Photoshop users. It is crucial to compositing and nearly all of Ligon's examples involve selection and compositing to one extent or another.
Finally, Ligon shows dozens of samples of digital art without a word of guidance as to how they were created. Readers, I think, would be better served had Ligon focused on providing more detailed "how-to" instructions.
In the end though, this is a pretty good introduction to creating digital art with Photoshop. At the moment, the subject is still a pretty narrow field and this is a solid entry. I would also suggest Susan Tuttle's "Digital Expressions: Creating Digital Art with Adobe Photoshop Elements". Same basic topic, but a very different authorial style.
Jerry
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