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Digital Painting in Photoshop
 
 
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Digital Painting in Photoshop [Paperback]

Susan Ruddick Bloom (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)

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Book Description

February 16, 2009 0240811143 978-0240811147 1
Have you ever considered using Photoshop to create fine art?

Photoshop is usually used for enhancing photos, but this extremely powerful software package is capable of so much more. Every feature, from brushes to background, can be customised and optimised for artistic effect. With a little guidance from a pro, your photoshop results can go from competent retouching of images to visually stunning re-interpretations of them, turning everyday pictures into breathtaking works of art.

In this beautiful and inspiring book, acclaimed artist, author and lecturer Susan Bloom shows you how to do just that. Starting with the fundamentals: creating your own artistic brushes and textured papers virtually, she goes on to demonstrate how to create a variety of classic artistic styles in Photoshop, with chapters on watercolours, pastels, charcoal and oil. Further chapters cover illustration techniques in photoshop, and using third-party software to create painterly effects.

While the results are highly polished and realistic, this is not a book written specifically for artists. The techniques are aimed squarely at the Photoshop user looking to broaden their pallette, with emphasis on altering photographs to create artwork, rather than creating artwork from scratch.

Beautifully written, clearly laid out, and guaranteeing inspiring results, this book is a must-have for every Photoshop user.

* Guide to using Photoshop to create fine art from photographs, covering many different artistic styles
* Highly visual, inspiring content with clear step-by-step instructions and hundreds of screenshots
* Backwards compatible approach: author has taken care to ensure that this fully up-to-date title also applies to previous editions of Photoshop

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Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Digital Painting Techniques: Practical Techniques of Digital Art Masters (Masters Collection) $30.08

Digital Painting in Photoshop + Digital Painting Techniques: Practical Techniques of Digital Art Masters (Masters Collection)


Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Susan Ruddick Bloom is a Professor of Art and Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at McDaniel College in Maryland. She has a BFA and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is well known for both her traditional wet darkroom alternative processes and her digital darkroom work. Sue has been teaching digital classes since the beginning of Photoshop and has used a Mac from the very first one on the market (128K, with a screen the size of an index card). Trained in drawing, painting, and printmaking, she was at one time a courtroom artist for television and newspapers. Her painterly skills enhance her photographic ones, and her images frequently combine techniques. Sue's work has been exhibited and collected widely.


Product Details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Focal Press; 1 edition (February 16, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0240811143
  • ISBN-13: 978-0240811147
  • Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #717,636 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
This book's intended audience is Photoshop users who have never explored the brushes and painting tools in Photoshop. It's not, however, really about "Digital Painting." The book introduces you (by way of 50 pages of screenshots of the brushes PS ships with) to brushes. Then it shows how to use a single technique, with variations, to achieve photo manipulations resembling watecolor, oils, and other traditional media. The technique, by the way, is not at all new, and you may already know it: duplicate the background layer, run a filter on it, add a layer mask, and then paint on the layer mask to reveal the filtered image. This is a far cry from just running the Watercolor filter and calling it a painting, but it is also not what I consider digital painting. This is a Photoshop cookbook, and it's a pretty good one. The text never references the figure numbers on the screenshots, which makes it hard to follow in many places. There's also a few places where the author neglects to mention how she got from here to there, which will leave beginners frustrated.

Bloom assumes her audience knows layer masks, blending modes, and layers, so her coverage of these subjects is scant. If you are familiar with layers, though, you may find this book is just the ticket to help you release your "inner artist." If you're a photographer, it'll give you some easy methods for artistically enhancing your portraits and landscapes.

A better book, which covers many more techniques, and is more clearly-written, is Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook: 61 Easy-to-Follow Recipes for Digital Photographers, Designers, and Artists by Tim Shelbourne.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
This book is a GREAT idea, yet it does need SOME improvements...

Benefits:

1) Provides a very nice introduction to many of the brushes and filters that you will find in Photoshop. The first 70 pages are basically "screenshots" that are dedicated to providing you with a quick, visual reference guide to the many of the brushes that Photoshop has. This does come in handy, especially if you are looking for a particular brush shape -- and don't want to take the time to manually search through Photoshop's large brush collection yourself. ;-)

2) Chapters 3 through 7 are dedicated to teaching the reader how to create various styles of artwork, such as how to produce a charcoal drawing, pastel artwork, work with watercolor, creating oil painting effects, using various artistic, illustration techniques, and even how to use some of the professional grade, 3rd-party plugins for Photoshop. The chapters are designed so that anyone who's had some moderate experience with Photoshop will know how to complete the various exercise. However, please note that this book is NOT designed for absolute beginners, as the author does expect that you have a working knowledge of many of Photoshop's program fundamentals, such as creating layers, desaturating a picture, working with filters, using layer masks, etc.

Disadvantages:

1) The book's title suggests that this book will teach you how to do "digital painting" in Photoshop. Unfortunately, it does NOT teach "digital painting", but instead, how to create similar artistic effects with your photos by using Photoshop's various filters and plugins. If you're looking for a book that teaches you how to paint, this is not it.

2) The instructions in this book seem to be a bit disorganized and confusing at times. The author really needs to stop, think out her thought process and then provide step-by-step directions for the reader. I found that several of the exercises tend to wander around as she tries a bit of this, and a dab of that with her artwork. Also, it seems that her artwork takes "magical leaps" between instructional steps, without any clear direction as how to achieve the same result as the author.

3) The author does not provide a CD (or a download option) for any of the exercises in the book. This makes it challenging, especially if you're not sure that you're doing a step correctly. The pictures used in the exercise should of been provided, so your readers could try it out themselves. ;-)

In summary, this book is very inspirational and provides a lot of powerful techniques for creating that artistic, painted look with your pictures. Yet, it does need some improvement...
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Now this is a COOL book! July 31, 2009
Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
OK, so this is COOL! I traditionally though of PhotoShop as a photographic imaging program and when I wanted to get a little 'artsy' with it I'd drop down a filter and run it against the image. I figured the most adjustments I had to it was to use masking, selections and opacity with various blends. This book has really brought me familiar with the brush within Photoshop. So many Photoshop books use the brush as a controlled and localized selection to apply effects. This book really shows you how to use it as a digital version of an actual brush. It is amazing how you can take a typical portrait and turn it into something special.

If you are a pro photographer you will really like how some of the effects can take a wedding portrait that has a good scene but horrible exposure or color and turn it into an artistic work of art that captures the essence of the moment. It really becomes more than just the image and should call for more profits.

if you are a photographer looking to get more artistic with your images or an artist trying to leverage some of the advanced functionality of Photoshop, I would recommend you pick up this book.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Mixed feelings
Disclaimer: I am not an artist nor a Photoshop professional. I rarely use Photoshop for anything except editing photos or making simple graphics for work. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Tania Laremore
Good Info - Weak Presentation
Digital Painting in Photoshop elicits two opposite opinions from me. The material and techniques presented are a good introduction to digital painting, using Photoshop exclusively. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Louis B. Dina
Title is Misleading.
I would have been far happier if this had been titled "Making Photos look like Paintings in Photoshop", because it does a very good job of that. Read more
Published 11 months ago by J. E. Patterson
Not What I Expected
If you're expecting a book that will help you learn to paint in photoshop (as the title suggests) this isn't it. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Arielle
Poor Execution
The book provides a very good description of creative techniques using PhotoShop. It also provides a good decription of basic tools. Read more
Published 19 months ago by bainbru
Reference
Overall, I liked this book. It is meant to expose you to all of the different styles of painting. While it does not go into depth on any given style, it does give you a solid... Read more
Published on February 20, 2010 by Julia Foster
Gorgeous Book, Wonderful Resource For Photoshop Mavens
One of my issues with many of the Photoshop/graphics type books out on the market is that there is too much writing and not enough images in the books that I see. What's that? Read more
Published on December 23, 2009 by Daniel McKinnon
Everything You Need to Know to Get Started with Digital Painting in...
Digital Painting in Photoshop by Susan Ruddick Bloom, is another quality book by Focal Press. As a skilled photography Photoshop user, I found myself lacking in the skills... Read more
Published on November 24, 2009 by Wildness
A 'must' reference for any serious photography collection
Susan Ruddick Bloom's DIGITAL PAINTING IN PHOTOSHOP is a 'must' reference for any serious photography collection: it surveys a lesser-covered capability of the Photoshop program... Read more
Published on November 12, 2009 by Midwest Book Review
Digital Painting in Photoshop
Very informative and the techniques described do not require additional software other than Photoshop. Interesting and useful images can be created that resemble works of art.
Published on October 21, 2009 by Walter Ray Davis Jr.
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