Customer Reviews

How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3: The art of creating photorealistic montages

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I had ranked an earlier edition as one of the four best Photoshop books available. With the CS3 edition, Caplin establishes himself in my eyes as one of the best Photoshop authors out there, Katrin Eismann being the other.

"How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3" has grown once again from earlier editions, weighing in with 397 pages of instructional text and two hours of video tutorials. Caplin's facility as a teacher has been apparent since the first edition of this book. His confidence has apparently (and justifiably) grown with his edition. The CS3 volume retains many of the examples from former editions (which are necessary) and adds many new ones, making the book an all-in-one Photoshop training manual.

Caplin has never had to resort to the silly attempts at humor employed by Deke McClelland, Scott Kelby and others. He is more than well equipped with a natural sense of whimsy. Caplin's tutorial on "Combining body parts" at pages 180 - 181 is an absolutely hilarious spoof on Arnold Schwarzenegger's "girly men" comment of some months back. If you can stop laughing long enough, it is also an excellent tutorial.

In all, there are about 170 tutorials in the book and some excursions into related subjects, such as the wisdom of carrying a small digital camera with you at all times to build our own image library. Every subject of importance to using Photoshop (i.e., learning Curves, Layer masks, etc.) and creating effective montages (i.e., creating effective shadows, combining body parts, perspective, etc.) is covered. I think it fair to say that a total Photoshop neophyte could find everything they need to know in "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3," even if they never intend to create a photorealistic montage, but I would also recommend Katrin Eismann's books on montage and retouching be purchased as well. These three volumes would form a literal encyclopedia of Photoshop.

Finally, you don't need Photoshop CS3 for this book to be useful. Perhaps 97% or more is applicable to any recent version of Photoshop.

As I said, I consider Steve Caplin to be, along with Katrin Eismann, one of the best authors on Photoshop. "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3" is the biggest and best of the series so far and I am pleased to say that Caplin has maintained his verve, imparting a sense of freshness even to the examples he has picked up from earlier editions.

This book is simply a must-have in any Photoshop library.

Jerry

I've been following this book through each of its 3 revisions and this is the strongest offering yet. In addition to being updated for CS3, the content has been expanded and the new material looks good.

This book is great for Photoshop users who are interested in collage and digital illustration [worth1000 style]; not so good for those just learning the program, retouchers or digital photo types. But set against the millions of Photoshop titles out there, this one is unique and recommended.

4 stars for some hard-to-follow instructions, and the utterly uninspired narratives in the Quicktime tutorials.

This fine book will help you accomplish two goals: 1) save time while editing your photos, and 2) create convincing composites that will amaze your friends. The Quicktime videos on the DVD are an excellent supplement to the expository text. Note, however, that the instruction is aimed at Photoshop users who have some experience (at least weak intermediate-level ability, perhaps).

In all honesty, I did not realize what a Photoshop genius Steve Caplin is until I watched some of his tutorial videos included on the book's DVD. In my opinion, the author's skills are roughly(!) in the same league as those of Bert Monroy. The book's video showing the creation of a grave is absolutely amazing. I therefore highly recommend this 4th edition to anyone looking to improve his/her photo editing wizardry.

There are a lot of good ideas and concepts provided in this book for some very cool effects. However, please know that many of the effects/settings are very specific to the images they use in the examples. For example, the section on "chroming" any image they use an image of a computer monitor and use the levels adjustments to make it look chrome. If/when you apply the same sort of settings to any of your own photos you will not get any results even remotely close to what they got. Your results will vary greatly with your own photos so it will take quite a bit of tweaking and trial/error to replicate.

Mr. Caplin has done it again with this edition of his wonderful book. Rather than bog readers down with endless minutia to add pages and make the book look impressive on the shelf, Mr. Caplin keeps each lesson to a two page spread that gives the readers all they need and nothing they don't, making it easy to find what you need explained in a few deceptively simple steps. The explanations can be succinct because Mr. Caplin understands the subject very well.

He explains what to worry about (perspective, light/shadow/color, proportion) and doesn't waste a lot of paper on things most Photoshop users know how to do (installing, using menus, zooming). If you know how to install and launch Photoshop but need help making your images look right, this is the book for you. If you don't know to click on a menu item to open it up, an extra 600 pages aren't going to help you master something as powerful as Photoshop. It may not look as impressive on the bookshelf, but then this book is so useful, it is rarely shelved anyway.

Mr. Caplin's dedication to his readers doesn't stop with your book purchase, or even with the DVD bulging with content. For years now he has been working tirelessly with readers through his website, providing weekly challenges, constructive feedback, encouragement and advice (Ok, you don't even need to own his book to participate, but why would anyone take such advantage?).

Although it has CS3 as part of the title, this is a very useful book for any Photoshop version that you may own. The basic requirements are that you know yur way around Photoshop. This is not a "learn by going through menus" type of book. I found that going through the frist few chapters (covering Selections) was a minimum requirements. After that you can go and jump from one 2 page tutorial to the other. It is simply written, not pretencious at all, by (obviously) a pro that has been playing with this software for ages. This book (and previous editions) and the "Friday Challenges" of the forum of the book's website have increased my Photoshop skills hundred fold! Steve Caplin has done it again!

As a relatively newcomer to the world of Photoshop I can say with confidence this book is very simple to follow and helps produce stunning effects for your photos.

Not only does it give you tips on how to enhance your photographs but it also teaches you how to achieve seemingly impossible effects with ease.

With the help of this book and participating in the Reader's Forum (which the author personally answers your questions and reviews your work)my photoshop skills have improved immensely.

The book is complimented with a DVD jammed packed with free stock images and video tutorials.

I strongly recommend How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3 to anyone who wants to learn and master the art of photorealistic montages.

Whether you are a skilled Photoshop user, or a newbie like me - you're going to love this book! I recently decided to purchase it after having compared it to the other Photoshop-related titles.

The book is packed full of creative and useful techniques, as well as fundamentals and operations of the Photoshop tool set. Tutorials are presented with walk-throughs and included with the book are the Photoshop files you need to complete the tutorials. It even includes movies to show you how techniques were performed.

For someone new to Photoshop (and frankly, I've been a little afraid of making the switch to Photoshop because of its complexity), I've found that Steve Caplin has really laid out the material in a user-friendly, understandable way. I've been able to follow the examples and complete the tutorials I've tried thus far.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to beef up their Photoshop skills or learn the program from Scratch, like I am doing. If you've used a graphics editing program before, you should feel right at home with "How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3".

I work in a design firm that recently upgraded to CS3. This book has fantastic tutorials! It not only covers some really great new features, it also provides a very clear methodology for quickly performing a number of tasks that can sometimes be very time consuming.
This book is great for experienced users as well as those who are just starting to build thier "real world" experiences.

Whether you are a beginner wanting to learn Photoshop from scratch, or a advanced user wanting to pick up some technique on how to create realistic photo montages, this is the book that you will want. Steve's step by step descriptions on how to perform each task makes learning Photoshop a joy. I would recommend this to any photoshopper at any level of experience.