Customer Reviews

How to Cheat in Photoshop CS4: The art of creating photorealistic montages

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"How to Cheat in Photoshop: CS4" is the bible for realistic photo montages, no other book even comes close. This is the forth edition of this book. While most of the material from previous editions is carried forward, each new edition has had new material worth the price of a new edition. The layout is usually two pages per topic with well chosen examples, based on real world problems. These are largely self contained so you can skip around as needed. This is not a book for novices. It assumes a reasonable familiarity with Photoshop but not an in depth knowledge. Some of the sections may require some serious work. You might want to have a copy of Photoshop Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann for in depth information on some of the topics. Interspersed in the technical Photoshop material is a gold mine of advise ranging from handling deadlines to ethics. The approach is not just how to do it but includes much information on efficient work to minimize the time and effort in a task. This is one of the better Photoshop books out of the huge number available and I can give it my strongest recommendation. One of the reviewers of the previous edition stated "As I said, I consider Steve Caplin to be, along with Katrin Eismann , one of the best authors on Photoshop.". I can second this opinion for this edition as well. If anything, Caplin has further improved his standing as a top flight Photoshop teacher.

This book lives up to its promise to teach you all sorts of wonderful Photoshop techniques and tricks which are a must for creative projects, even for those who are already pretty well versed with Photoshop in general. The book is very well organized, easy to understand (you must, of course, follow along on your computer!), and very clear. I purchased the book after I had read and tested several excerpts that you find on the publishers web site. It is refreshing to be able to read chapter excerpts, so you can decide whether or not it is worth buying the book. I have no patience with dumb, poorly written books that simply regurgitate standard Photoshop basics and I've been very disappointed with too many books that I've purchased. This one is no disappointment and gets my whole hearted recommendation. Great Job, Mr. Caplin!

If you've never had a version of Steve Caplin's "How to Cheat in Photoshop..." series, it's a must have book for all Photoshop libraries. The easy to follow tutorials will teach you how to save huge amounts of time creating images in Photoshop. The exercises are for real life applications, and I cannot imagine not having this book!
If you own a previous version to "How to Cheat in Photoshop...," however, save your money and buy some other book. This version, written for CS4, has nearly NO new examples, and is basically a rehash of previous versions. Oh sure, the language and commands have been updated for CS4, but otherwise it's the same book as the last one with a new cover, and a couple of videos tossed in. It's all-around a disappointment to an incredibly phenomenal and essential book series. If you decide to shop for another book, I'd recommend you check out Deke McClelland's Adobe Photoshop CS4 One-on-One Deke's One-On-One series are the consumate Photoshop reference books, and if you only had two books in your Photoshop library, you would have an excellent library with only the "One-On-One" book, and ONE of Caplin's "How to Cheat in Photoshop" books!

This book is chock full of excellent tips, but the DVD really leaves something out. There are no cross references from the book on the DVD unless I am missing something. Also the links on the DVD expired so..Steve Caplin really knows his business but again, all of the examples are shown on a MAC leaving PC users in the dark on many of the tricks and tips. I know MAC is the standard graphic computer, but I cannot afford one let alone replace all of the graphic software.

I suggest that if you put a reference in your book to the DVD...the reference should show up the same on the DVD chapter. You have to dig around looking for the corresponding page so it needs work. The book, no complaints...excellent as always.

This book is well written and useful on two levels.
Working through the first four chapters is a great way to learn basic skills and valuable shortcuts when using photoshop.(Well worth doing)
The rest of the book is full of valuable tips, shortcuts and incredible projects which can only enhance your ability to produce great pictures.
The instructions are easy to follow and the tutorials on the accompanying dvd are equally useful.
I am a relative novice with photoshop and I can highly recommend this book.
Having used a variety of other instructional books,"How to cheat in Photoshop" is by far the easiest to read, entertaining and by far the most useful.

I've been shooting all these photos with my new camera, and wanted to find some new and interesting things to do with them. This book fit the bill, with lots of tips on combining different shots to create one, new, eye-catching image. This is not a book for Photoshop beginners, but if you have some skills, you'll put them to good use here.

How to Cheat, is a somewhat misleading title, as its not immediately obvious that this is a comprehensive look at the tricks used by Photoshop montage artists. But having said that this is a very useful series of books dealing fairly specifically with the building up of composite images in Photoshop.
Steve Caplin is an accomplished montage artist and many of his illustrations have graced the pages of the Guardian and the Independent, and he brings a lot of his experience into the techniques presented here.
How to Cheat seems to approach each new release of Photoshop as a challenge to present new tools, techniques and material, and this pays dividends to the reader as the accompanying dvd contains pdf files of many of the tutorials from previous editions.
The author seems to have spent some time getting to grip with the new tools of CS4 and finding some real world application for them, and so the book serves as a good catch-up to familiarize the reader with some new tools, but by no means is Cs4 a must have as techniques are backwardly compatible on the whole.
This book is balanced very well for its intended audience, those already comfortable using Photoshop, and as such the content here is of high value with little padding explaining the interface and so on, the tutorials all fit neatly over a two page spread, and on the whole the examples are very clear and to the point.
The first section deals with the fundamental skills required for the rest of the book, selection, masking, the pen tool, layers and image adjustment, well worth a read through no matter how keen your skills.
After the fundamentals catch-up the bulk of the book then tackles the various montage skills, setting the scene by looking at composition and perspective, the perspective chapter is excellent, easily tackled and incredibly useful.
A book packed with techniques, and Steve Caplin seems to put a lot of effort into making each version stand on its own, with fresh tutorial, techniques and the latest Photoshop features in context, the authors experience and enthusiasm make the tutorials very readable, and the book as a whole a recommended reference for the Photoshop montage artist, or even the intermediate or advanced user looking for some catch-up or fresh ideas.

I would put this book in the "cute" category. It is mostly things I don't foresee using, such as how to create a realistic looking `blowing bubbles' scene, creating ice cubes in a glass of water, creating spilled water.... It has some decent basic information on quick mask, and making selections. But overall, it's an entertaining book, just not one that I foresee referring to in the future.

A wonderful book, but not for newbye. Sometimes it will be useful more step by step instructions.

I have been in the design industry for 3 years now, this book has been an excellent read. I have learned a lot of things that have been extremely helpful I would recommend this book to anyone as there are some things he shows you how to do that you more than likely never knew about. And if not it can always be a good reference. Some of the instructions in the tutorials can be a little vague, I'm into chapter 5 and have run into it only twice. (Google is a great reference in this case). All in all excellent job, great content, and the bonus dvd is fabulous.