Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art [Paperback]

Susan Ruddick Bloom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 2006

Digital Collage and Painting proudly showcases the work of twenty-one talented digital artists. Each artist walks you through the creation of a piece of their art and lets you in on their secrets about equipment, software, favorite papers, and how their creative process begins. The artists included are:

Audrey Bernstein
Paul Biddle
Leslye Bloom
Stephen Burns
Luzette Donohue
Katrin Eismann
Paul Elson
Steven Friedman
Ileana Frómeta Grillo
Bill Hall
Julieanne Kost
Rick Lieder
Bobbi Doyle-Maher
Ciro Marchetti
Lou Oates
Cher Threinen-Pendarvis
James G. Respess
Fay Sirkis
Jeremy Sutton
Maggie Taylor
Pep Ventosa

* Discover how the computer can be used to paint on photographs, incorporating other visual materials into images
*Learn from step-by-step examples for painting, collage, and panoramics
* The associated website contains the art samples used in the book so that you can practice the different techiques

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Using Painter and Photoshop, you'll discover ways to incorporate watercolors, pastels, oils, charcoals, and collage into your digital images." - PC Photo, Oct. 2006

"This is not a book for beginning Photoshop and Painter users; it does not give exact instruction on how to operate either program. This makes it perfect for those who are familiar with either program and want to strengthen their skills as digital artists. Inspiration can be obtained not only from rhe author's own images but the third chapter which showcases twenty-one digital artists...Bloom has made projects, with files available for download on a website, for those who want some practice with the information gained from this book." - Apogee Photo Magazine, August 2006

"Digital Collage and Painting is yet another reason why Focal Press have become one of my favorite publishing imprints. Excellent coverage of Photoshop and Painter. Contributing authors and their featured projects are well selected...The book is well written and researched and it provides a wealth of information which is both relevant and useful. The range of projects showcased and each artist's insights are something we can all benefit from. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. For anyone interested in digital painting or creating digital collages, this one is highly recommended." - Mario Georgiou, www.kickstartnews.com., Sept. 2006

"Digital Imaging and Painting Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art is a meaty read with a website to complement it." Advanced Photoshop Magazine, Sept 06

Book Description

The digital "alternative technique" book to help photographers take their imagery to the next level. Accompanied by a cool website.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (June 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240807057
• ISBN-13: 978-0240807058
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,003,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, but in some areas only, August 1, 2006

By 

John Stevenson (Colorado Springs, CO U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art (Paperback)

Enthusiastically written and covering a comprehensive range of topics, ideas and projects, this is an engaging book. I found the structure to be interesting, with a lot of material intended to inspire the reader at the front (including twenty-one individual "chapterettes", each involving a single artwork project, from invited contributors). The only purely instructional chapter comes right at the end, offering more detailed insight into some of the key steps and procedures used throughout the balance of the tome. And, in total, a bulky tome this is - 583 pages and 3 pounds plus a little (to be almost exact). A lot of the material presented is very inventive; for example, I do not recall seeing any of the techniques used as the basis of the worked (and finely artistic) examples within the `Painting in Photoshop ...' chapter included within any other of the now growing number of contemporary photo-art texts. Collage is taken to include the building of panoramic photographs and a whole chapter is devoted to these. However, arguably the best software for actually doing such constructions - NHIS' PTgui - isn't included (presumably because it doesn't fall directly into the Photoshop or Painter bucket). It's a shame, I think, that the urge to put the names of the two super-heavyweight software packages on the cover of the book lead to exclusions like this .... Fo2PiX' ArtMasterPro application would have been very worthy of some coverage in this case also. There are a couple of other omissions which are really too obvious to go unremarked. First, there's almost no material in the book on portraiture - for example, just two of those "chapterettes" involve using and developing full-facial images, while a large proportion of the author's own fine art work involves just landscape and still life subject matter. Secondly, there are some clear encouragements given at the outset (that is; within Chapter 1, titled `Concept') on pre- and post-visualization of the fine art. Post-visualization almost always needs to include some planning on a target size for the output/finished printed work. Again, a few of the "chapterettes" include some details on this, but it is a topic which remains pretty much absent from the remainder of the text. Overall, the careful reader will undoubtedly find a whole slew of new ideas from within this worthy book; but, may have to work independently - and/or pioneeringly - to execute some of them in detail.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art, November 24, 2006

By 

Beverly S. Roveto "Suni" (CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art (Paperback)

This book was like reading a great novel, I couldn't put it down! The inspiration was excellent. The incorrect assumption of some that "digital" means "computer generated" is debunked in this excellent work which has lots of beautiful examples of many kinds of digital art (not just collage). There are lots of step by step tutorials that are helpful and tips for using the tools of PS and Painter to their best advantage.

It is not a beginners book however as Bloom assumes that the reader is familiar with PS and Painter. Still this might be the work that makes one REALLY want to do the work needed to become proficient in these programs.

Loved it more than any other work on this subject and I already have a shelf full!!!

Suni R

37 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware, November 10, 2006

By 

Rogan Black - See all my reviews

This review is from: Digital Collage and Painting: Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art (Paperback)

Ok, firstly if you want a hands-on plenty of action book stay away from this one. Sure you get to see how other artist have created their work but if you read carefully there are gaps between getting from one stage to the next in some cases. Also a MAJOR dissapointment is you get no images to play with so you can attempt to emulate what the artist is doing as you read. Using the same techniques on different images can obviously give you totally different results.

There is a small hands-on section (26 pages) at the back where you have to download the images to work with. Come on guys how about a CD..? You also have to download a total of 49 files off the web if you want all of them AND they are all largish TIFFS instead of jpgs so be prepared for a long download session.

Basically if you want to be a digital vouyer and have a perve at how others do it without having fun yourself buy this book. If you want to get down and dirty and have heaps of fun then look elswhere. I have read many good PS and Painter books but for me this is not one of them. I might add I am a very experienced PS user and more than a fair Painter user and while the author certainly knows her stuff the book for me is a major letdown and certainly not for a new user looking for a good start to take them to an intermediate level.