Customer Reviews

Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook: 61 Easy-to-Follow Recipes for Digital Photographers, Designers, and Artists

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is really an outstanding book that goes past the standard photograph retouching that most Photoshop books concentrate on and shows you how to use all of Photoshop to produce artistic effects, thus demonstrating the synergy of Photoshop's features. I second the other reviewer's comment that the only extra item that you really need to get the most out of these effects is a graphics tablet, which most Photoshop users will not have. Thus you might want to make that investment before you get started.
Each effect contains a brief description, step-by-step numbered instructions, and images to go along with each instruction so that you can see the resulting image plus all of the intermediate images you should get as a result. There are also screen shots of Photoshop menus so that you can know you are doing the correct adjustment at each step of the instructions. You will notice that some of the effects have names that are duplicates of Photoshop's native filters- water color for example. This is because some of the built-in filters are limited in the range and quality of results that can be obtained, and this book attempts to give the discerning Photoshop artist a higher quality result through a greater range of options and adjustments. This kind of book has been needed for a long time and I highly recommend it. A good companion to this book is "Photoshop Filter Effects Encyclopedia", also published by O'Reilly. This second book allows you to read about all of Photoshop's native filters and get an idea for their possiblilities as well as their limitations.
I notice that Amazon does not show the table of contents for this book so I do that here:
READY TO COOK - Introduction, making selections, working with layers, sharpening, paths, lighting effects
TONAL & COLOR EFFECTS - High-key and low key effects, Psychedelic poster effect, creative black and white, selective coloring, tone separation
GRAPHIC ART EFFECTS - Art Nouveau, Warhol screen-print, watercolor, oil painting, pencil sketch, pen and ink drawing, woodcut and linocut,
LIGHTING EFFECTS - Adding rays of light, Simulating studio lighting, Creating a neon sign, creating a star-filled sky, adding fire and flames, simulating candlelight, lens flare, chiaroscuro
NATURAL WORLD EFFECTS -Clouds,Simulating rain, water droplets, Rainbows, Lightning, Snow Reflections, Ripples, Sunsets, Nighttime, Changing the season
TRADITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC EFFECTS - Simulating color filters, contrast masking, adding film grain, infrared photography effect, cross-processing effect, hand tinting, duotones
DISTORTION EFFECTS - Photo mosaic, soft focus and selective depth of field, Movement and motion blur effects, Fish-eye lens effect, Creating panoramas, Displacement effect
TEXTURE EFFECTS - Using texture overlays, Turning a figure to stone, Wood textures, Stone textures, Metal effect, Glass effect, Plastic effect
PRESENTATION EFFECTS - Frame effect, Vignette effect, painterly borders, Out of the frame, Signature or monogram custom brush

After developing a smooth workflow to transfer digital images from their camera through Photoshop (PS) to a digital print or an on-line image, many photographers start to think about using PS for something other than exposure and color corrections. There's an itch to see if they can create something beyond a good image. The "Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook" is aimed at those readers.

Like most PS cookbooks, this volume provides a series of recipes for transforming pictures. The book is divided into 9 sections. After a very brief review of the tools of PS, the sections deal with different types of effects, like tonal and color effects, lighting effects and presentation effects. Each of the sections contains several recipes. For example, the section on distortion effects contains recipes for photo mosaic, soft focus and selective depth of field, movement and motion blur effects, and fish-eye lens effects.

The problem with many cookbooks, including this one, is that they give recipes without explaining exactly what is going on as each of the steps is taken. For example, in one instruction on using the lighting effects filter, the reader is told to set the height slider to 28, without any explanation of what this setting will accomplish. You might wonder if there is some magic in 28.

To further complicate matters, each recipe uses a picture that is available for download on the web. That might appear handy, except that irrelevant steps are required to set up the picture to the point where the effect can be applied. I found this to be particularly true of several recipes like the one for simulating studio lighting. So many different steps were involved in manipulating the particular image before one got to the studio lighting effect that someone trying to apply the recipe to his or her own photo might become lost in the irrelevant steps. A better cookbook set-up is to provide a recipe for a single effect that a photographer can look up and then apply.

This problem may be related to the author's apparent indecision about whether he was providing a cookbook, where a list of steps to achieve a goal is provided, or a tutorial, where techniques are taught by following a specific example. If it were the latter, there should had been much more depth in the discussions.

Another problem was the lack of consistency in the level of detail in providing instructions. The simplest example was that the author would sometimes tell you to click OK when finished with a menu, and at other times not tell you even though required. Since there were times when I was expected to leave a menu on-screen while performing another step, this led to confusion because I wondered whether the menu should be left on screen before going to the next step or closed.

Still, several of the recipes proved useful like the recipe for high key effects (although even that recipe provided for the destructive flattening of an image as part of the process). I also found the recipe for contrast masking to be a useful tool for adjusting contrasty pictures.

Recognizing that some of the effects may prove useful, the reader will have to determine if, despite the inadequate instructions, this book is worth having.

There seem to be plenty of books available that rehash all the tools and features available in Photoshop; what I typically think of as a different author taking the help file for a spin. Have you already mastered the "basics" of working with photos in Photoshop? If you fall into the category of anywhere "beyond amateur" then I recommend getting a copy of the "Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook."

I consider myself a Photoshop "Pro" but there are always new techniques and ideas out there to learn. Read through just a few of the "recipes" in this book, and you quickly see Tim Shelbourne's expertise. Tim shows us how the same tool can be used in a variety of ways in concert with tools & techniques to produce varied creative outcomes.

Many of the instructions in each "recipe" (tutorial) in the book are very specific to the particular photo used in the example and may not be reused when applying the overall effect to another photo. That said, there is much to be learned by actually going through each exercise - and the actual photos used in the tutorial are available online. Personally I prefer to actually do, and not just read, so I consider this a bonus. By doing, I tend to remember the tools better than if I have just read or had it told to me. Like any recipe, a good cook will fine tune the ingredients to their liking for a different result.

Where many of the examples given with each recipe may fall short in actual practicality upon first glance, once you give them a try you realize that you are learning valuable techniques. Examples like the photo mosaic featured on the cover may seem like a "one-off if I ever use it" example, but if you walk through the steps of making the mosaic, you will have added a new tool in your cache of ideas when facing a new project. If you are looking for new angles at approaching an image and doing more than "just" cleaning the image up, this book is for you.

What I appreciated most about Tim's perspective was that each technique seemed targeted at creating a work of art rather than just an "improved" photo. Both ideas are necessary in your bag of tricks, but Tim's was a refreshing look at the powerful abilities provided within Photoshop.

The print quality of the book is excellent. Good choice of size and page layout, though some of the pages seem a little busy getting everything to fit (tool screen shots, progression of the image along with the step-by-step instructions. Print of actual pages is both clean and represents good colors to actually see the progression in the photo. I like that the paper chosen is heavy enough and has only a slight matte finish - glossy in this case would have made viewing the photos a pain if under a bright light.

Overall, I enjoyed this title for the varied ideas and formats. I felt that around half of the techniques offered were either new ideas or gave me a new angle at approaching things different than I might have previous done. The book was well worth the read.

Level: Medium (beyond beginner but will interest Advanced users as well)
Rating: Highly Recommended

This book provides clear step-by-step instructions for creating many traditional photographic and graphic arts effects using Photoshop. It does not deal with color correction and retouching, but with creating new images based on photographs. It covers a wide variety of effects. You won't use all or even most of them, but if you are interested in this kind of work there should be enough here to make the book worthwhile.

This book is nominally for the CS3 version of Photoshop, and includes a good summary of the new features, but doesn't use very many of them in the recipes.

The most impressive effects were in the chapter "Graphic Art Effects". This chapter deals with creating traditional painterly images such as water color, pencil drawing, pen and ink, and even woodcut. Unfortunately this is also the area where Photoshop gives you the least help--the recipes here are essentially that you do a little bit of prep work, and then you trace the photograph by hand.

Other interesting examples were applying a flat tattoo to a curved body, adding a rainstorm, adding a rainbow (surprisingly easy with an existing rainbow gradient), caricatures (distortion), and adding a simulated wood look under a photograph. It also includes the ever-popular "fully engulfed in flames" look, saved from banality by including flame reflections in a polished saxophone.

The book doesn't do much explaining in the recipes, but it does have a good summary of Photoshop features in the beginning of the book, including a lot about layers (which you will use heavily in these recipes). Unlike many other books the techniques do not depend very much on the correct choice of values for the many Photoshop parameters. Most of the recipes take about ten steps, which I think is a good balance of complexity against the impressive final results.

There are many intermediate screen shots so that you can check your progress (handy if you tend to lose your place and leave out steps). My only significant gripe about the book is that the recipes are printed in a tiny sans serif font (I measured it at 8 points on 9 point line spacing).

Very Good Feature: the sample images are freely downloadable at the book's web site rather than on CD.

There are hundreds of third party books for Photoshop, but this is one of the most gorgeous looking I have seen. It is in full color and the Photoshop artwork is inspiring. There are 61 step-by-step projects designed to teach you how to achieve interesting effects from photos. Flipping through the pages makes you just want to start right in and try some.

To use the book, you can download the project files from a web link you find inside the book. The download is about 29MBs, but contains most of the original photos needed.

The first project I tried out is one where you use a photo of the head of a horse and place it unto a textured wood background and you end up with something that could be a wine label or a poster. I did run into one problem where the wooden background was missing from the project's files. I was able to create one myself and still follow the project. My final product didn't look exactly like the one in the book, but it was darn close. Close enough that I was rather pleased with it.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 is covered in this book, so I am not sure how well these projects would all work using an older version which may not have all the features used.

I then proceeded to do a project that turns photos into watercolor paintings. I used my own photo, then tried it again on another photo. After a couple of tries, I almost have the steps memorized.

Other projects show how to add a starry sky and a full moon to a photo of what looks like London Bridge at night, and adding reflections to objects, turning a figure to stone, or turning a photo into what looks like a painting. I have done a lot of dabbling in Photoshop just trying different effects but this book showed me a lot of tricks I never would have figured out on my own.

This is as much fun as eating candy. You might even want to print some of your results out and frame them.

Despite the fact that this book features many of the same cliched effects you've seen in other Photoshop books, I'm giving this book 5 stars. Shelbourne's chapter on graphic art effects (oil painting, pencil sketch and watercolor) alone is worth the price of admission. I lurk regularly at Photoshop-based forums at the DPReview.com and RetouchPro.com, looking for new effects to try on my photos. Shelbourne, in a handful of pages, has given me plenty to savor for quite some time.

Are you an experienced Photoshop user or just a novice? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Tim Shelbourne, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that is an invaluable resource that you'll return to again and again.

Shelbourne, begins by taking a look at the host of improvements to the way Photoshop looks and works in Version CS3, like: Smart objects, smart filters, multiple clone sources, refine edges, improved curves, and quick selection tool. Next, the author shows you how to make accurate selections, which is the key to the art of successful image manipulations. Then, he discusses how layers are the bedrock of successful image editing in Photoshop. The authors also focus on how to disable any in-camera sharpening and sharpening images in Photoshop after the event, as this gives you far more control over the final degree of sharpness in the image. He continues by explaining how Photoshop is not a true-vector based program, and because the terminology is rather confusing, you can think of vectors in Photoshop simply as paths--in essence, how the two things are one and the same. Finally, the author shows you how to use Photoshop's Lighting Effects filter.

This most excellent book is a real bonus for those times when inspiration runs short or you need to pin down a particular effect. More importantly, this book is organized into different areas, each covering a particular genre of Photoshop recipes.

The book covers a pretty broad range of effects you might want to experiment with. I tried out a few of the examples on my own pictures with success. Although, I did get frustrated with a few of the effects that recommend the use of a graphics tablet (which I don't have). Photoshop has always just been a hobby, but I am really tempted to get a tablet after going through this book.

The explanations are good, but assume you have a pretty good understanding and familiarity with Photoshop. The Editorial Review lists the types of effects the book covers, so be sure to read through that. The book is one in a series, so I'd recommend checking out the other books as well - they're all good.

Like everyone else who rated this book, I would've given it five stars for all the stated reasons if I had been using Photoshop for a year or so.

Unfortunately, the author is an expert and assumes everybody who reads the detailed instructions in the book knows exactly what he is talking about. Apparently, he only had experienced Photoshoppers review or try to follow his instructions prior to publication. Thus, it can be a very frustrating experience for a newbie to try to duplicate projects presented in the book. (If the book was designed to be a cookbook, then it should contain detailed fool-proof instructions and avoid statements and/or instructions that only experienced Photoshoppers understand.)

It is a shame because, with just a little bit of extra work, this would've been an absolute must-buy for anyone whether they were experienced Photoshoppers or had just bought their first copy of CS2.

I'm sure the author is thinking "I can't make the instructions any more clearer than what is in the book." If the author is preparing another book, I suggest that he submit his instructions to a few newbies to determine if they can duplicate every project without tearing their hair out.

I'll bet they can't.

There are a lot of good ideas 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. Your results will vary greatly with your own photos so it will take quite a bit of tweaking.