Digital Painting in Photoshop [Paperback]

Susan Ruddick Bloom (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0240811143 | ISBN-13: 978-0240811147 | Publication Date: February 16, 2009 | Edition: 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

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: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction to the artistic possibilities, August 5, 2009

By 

Bob Nolin (Bethel Park, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Digital Painting in Photoshop (Paperback)

(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.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A cool book, but improvement is needed..., October 18, 2009

By 

Dustin Williams (Arizona, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Digital Painting in Photoshop (Paperback)

(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...

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now this is a COOL book!, July 31, 2009

By 

Yo' Vinny (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Digital Painting in Photoshop (Paperback)

(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.