Customer Reviews

Digital Photo Artist: Creative Techniques and Ideas for Digital Image-making

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I have already 'Amazon-reviewed' an earlier book by the same two authors - "Photo Art: In-Camera/Darkroom/Digital/Mixed Media" - and am now beginning to run out of superlatives! If there's anyone out there who doubts whether digital imaging can be used as the basis of fine art, then they should buy and read this latest book before speaking or writing one more word on that subject. Like its predecessor, the book is exactly what the Introduction says (so if you are looking for something that's specific and "recipe-based" to Photoshop, then you'll not be 100% satisfied on that narrow account). But in terms of ideas and inspirations: well, a 150% rating would be the minimum appropriate. Just the material covering uses of digital scanners as an input option for digital imaging is worth the price of this volume. Other topics that I really found intriguing are: the combinations of color images with black and white components, the use of the solarize filter in Photoshop as a starting point for other effects, and also the explorations of building image sequences spanning time. If I had any criticism of this book it would be that some of the topics are worthy of fully worked procedural examples, whilst some others are perhaps too slavishly dependent on imitations of conventional film-based specialties (in the cross- and alternative-processing chapters, for example). But then again, any of the single ideas set out in the book can be used in combination with any of the others - so increasing the scope for artistic and aesthetic judgment, at all levels of proficiency in digital imaging. Highly recommended.

I was very disappointed with the outdated Photoshop information in this book & its many illustrations using nude women. He does give some good ideas such as using a stroke to create a geometric shape. Otherwise, I would suggest buying Digital Photo Art instead, it gives much more current information about techniques & the products used.

This book was a good inspiration starter for some fun digital photographic projects. It got me started with flat bed scanning art!