Customer Reviews

How to Cheat in Photoshop, Second Edition: The art of creating photorealistic montages

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Searching for "Cheat", "Photoshop" or any combination here on Amazon often leads to earlier editions of the book. If you're looking for the latest (third) edition and can't find it, try searching for the ISBN number:

0-240-51985-X

Hope this helps!

Steve

Why does Amazon insist on selling an outdated version of this book? My wife bought me this book from Amazon for Father's day, but had to return it and buy the LATEST EDITION from another online retailer.

I'm a graphic designer, working with both print and web, and I am finding this book an absolute treasure! If you're an intermediate Photoshop user, there's no question about it, YOU NEED THIS BOOK! The tricks and tips revealed in this book are simply amazing. I've only owned the book for a few days, and am already using techniques I've learned from these pages. I'm eagerly waiting to devour more of the material.

This is not a book for novices--it assumes that you already know your way around Photoshop. Without that basic knowledge, you'll be out of your depth in many of these lessons.

I love it that each two-page spread is a self-contained unit/lesson which teaches a technique or procedure that will give you the desired results.

I have to say that I don't think I've ever been this excited about a book on Photoshop!!

This is my 24th PS book. I've been through all the page by page manuals from the CIAB books through the Real World types, the Magic Series, WOW Series, etc. I'm at that stage where Photrealism is a challenge I would like to conquer. I have both books by the photorealistic guru Bert Monroy, and they are both excellent. Steve Caplin's book "How to Cheat in Photoshop" is a joy and can proudly sit right next to Berts books. While Mr. Monroy's books go into step by step detail, Steve Caplins book shows the shortcuts that become invaluable time savers when working in this type of medium. And there are serious plusses here. Beside the standard CD with images to use to work through the lessons, some of the more complicated lessons have video instruction that make what he is trying to convey much easier to follow. But my favorite thing about this book is that it is set up as a reference book. If you need to "match the head to the body", there is a heading and a two page "how to". Sections include: Selecting, Hiding and Showing, Composing the Scene, Light and Shade, Heads and Bodies, Shiny Surfaces, Metal, Wood and Stone, Paper and Fabric, The Third Dimension and Hyper Realism. But again, this book is set up like a reference book. It's not really intended to be started on page one and worked through. It's like Scott Kelby's great "Down and Dirty" books. So who should buy this book? If you are not into Photorealism, stay away. And although the lessions are well written and some even have video instruction, I am not sure if I would recommend this book to PS novices. The book is definitely written with the assumption that you have a certain level of knowledge of PS. But I really am enjoying this book. I can't remember thinking a book was this cool since I read Photoshop Channel Chops! This book is going to get used a lot.

How to cheat in photoshop

First let me state that: This is not a bad book.

I have bought a lot of photoshop books, but I have so much storage place on my shelves, so I have to choose which ones I want to keep, and this one is not a keeper.

It's too basic and at the same time a beginner would be lost trying to complete the images!

The sub title of this book is: The art of creating Photorealistic Montages. I guess that if you want to achieve his style (Steve Caplin), maybe this book is for you. But Steve's images are far from realistic. They look like photomontages "Kitschy" style!

You are never going to achieve realistic montage using quickmask and a brush to draw a mask. If you want to learn how to draw a mask, buy a Deke McClelland book (if you are serious with photoshop buy Deke's DVDs).

Steve is overusing the Burn & Dodge tool and I am not sure that he knows what the displacement map is.

Not a bad book but not a good one.

The best thing about the book is the section dealing with Glass reflexion & refraction from page 162 to 173.

Steve Caplin should produce a weekly (or even daily) webcast of his photorealistic montage techniques. Not only is he a master of the art, but he writes wonderfully well. Not for him is the amateurish comedian approach of Deke McClellan and Scott Kelby; both of whose books would be far more informative without their clumsy buffoonery.

Instead Caplin writes in a very straight-forward manner. Never dry, never tedious, sometimes with a slight touch of sly British humor, and always informative. Caplin rganizes his book into 151 short sections, each of them a self-contained lesson on some aspect of Photoshop that may be involved in the creation of montages. (This is not, however, a book for total beginners in Photoshop.)

Caplin does more to cover the various methods of selection and masking in fewer pages than anyone else I've seen . . . and he does it better. The use of the pen tool, usually the downfall of many, is thoroughly covered in six pages. (Examples are provided on the accompanying CD.)

Manipulating lights, shadows, perspective, matching skin tones, combining body parts, simulating glass and metal are just some of the subjects Caplin treats well.

I am writing about the third edition of this book, updated to cover Photoshop CS2. I have all three and they just keep getting better. Caplin obviously listens to his readers and incorporates their suggestions. Simply put, Caplin is a master of his craft, a far better writer than many of those covering this subject and one can hope he publishes more books in the future.

Jerry

One of the best books written on Photoshop to date. I have read many books on Photoshop in the past, and I could never find one piece of material that put together all of the things that I was looking for until I bought this book.

It is definitely not a "How-to-use" Photoshop book, which there are numerous to chose from, but an outstanding guide to the techniques used to make great photo montages. These techniques are applicable whether you are actually in the business or just like to explore the depth of Photoshop as a hobby.

I consider myself an intermediate user of Photoshop, and I can honestly say that there were many things that I didn't even know that Photoshop could do until I read this book.

The examples are detailed enough to easily follow if you know your way around the program. All of the photo files are included with the attached CD along with Quicktime movies of some of the projects.

In addition, Steve Caplin provides some of his own insights about Photoshop and the photo montage business between chapters. I agree wholeheartedly on using the Wacom Graphire tablets. They are wonderful and come with some nice software.

Overall a great book. I am always going back to reference it.

A terrific book! Step-by-step tutorials with plenty of illustrations in an easy-to-read format. Plus a CD with movie tutorials, examples and bonus photographs. I bought the previous edition and this edition has even more. I especially like the project on how to add beard and stubble. With this book I can make my composites look believable and save myself a ton of work in the process. And because the writer, Steve Caplin, isn't wordy, you start learn quickly and aren't bored silly. I even enjoyed reading it during my leisure time.

This book lays out Photoshop tricks quick and easy. I am so glad Steve Caplin decided to write this book because I'm the type that gets bored and sleepy looking at a lot of text when trying to follow instructions. I end up giving up or trying to figure things out by myself without reading. Talk about A.D.D. and I'm soooo happy I came across this book because I've since been trying out every technique and Photoshop isn't so intimidating anymore! The book is very visual with lots of step-by-step pictures. Each Photoshop technique is covered on a spread. They don't even go beyond a spread. It's short and super easy. I just love this book! I don't usually have time to write reviews but for this one I made an exception. I'm now going to check out other books by this author because I love his style. He's to the point and his book is visually enjoyable, too.

How to Cheat is a really great book. Very well written, and the best illistrations of discussed techniques that I've seen. Every artist has a different technique, so you'll be learning Steve Caplin's look in this book. That is, the sort of thing you'll see in magazine articles, table of contents, etc.

Printed on great stock, this is a good looking book that is also just plain fun to read.

The only problem with the book is the included softare samples will not run under Mac OS X 10.4. The publisher has no update posted, nor any tech support on their website. Steve Caplin gets 5/5, FocalPress gets 3.5/5 for a useless website and no update.

Squeezed between the covers of this book is an enormous amount of essential information about how to do just about everything with Photoshop with a little bit of Illustrator thrown in for good measure. The author starts the book off with one of the best visual demonstrations of how to use Photoshop to make selections, replace colors, and many more. Using commercial illustrations he has created for national magazines and newspapers he shows how he achieved the effects with just enough information to allow you to be able to create a similar photo treatment without making it so complicated that it puts you into a comma reading it. While the latest edition doesn't cover all of the new CS2 tools, it covers the ones necessary for those that do photo clean-ups or manipulation. He even explains how the 3D model feature in Photoshop works - a topic most authors neatly avoid.
The quality of the book is great. The colors in the examples are vibrant and it is visually appealing enough to warrant just sitting down and flipping through the book to get ideas for a project.