Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers: 113 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Improve Your Photos and Create Special Effects (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) [Paperback]

Barry Huggins (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cookbooks (O'Reilly) | Publication Date: August 23, 2005

With the introduction of affordable and easy-to use digital cameras, people are taking photographs like never before. While the digital medium greatly simplifies the photographic process, it also offers photographers unprecedented opportunities to manipulate their images on their personal computers.

Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers tells you everything you need to know to use Adobe Photoshop CS2 to adjust, correct, retouch, and manipulate your photographs-without making you first learn everything there is to know about the application. These straightforward, easy-to-follow recipes give you specific directions so you can quickly and easily:

• Fix exposure, focus, and color problems
• Add special effects like motion blurs, lens effects, and surface textures
• Improve portraits by removing red eye, wrinkles, and blemishes
• Add and remove objects from photos seamlessly
• Use lighting effects to create more dramatic images
• Restore faded and damaged photos
• Give new shots a vintage, old-fashioned look
• Create posterized and hand-tinted images
• Assemble and fine-tune composite photos
• Correct perspectives

The book tackles each real-life project in full color, with a hands-on approach. The fully illustrated recipes produce reliable and immediate results, and include "at a glance" panels and tip boxes that cover key techniques in detail.

Barry Huggins, the author of Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers, has created the only recipe-format manual on photographic retouching targeted specifically to digital photographers. Founder of a highly successful multimedia training and consulting company, Huggins is uniquely qualified to deliver step-by-step instruction in digital retouching methodology, with easy-to-follow recipes that address specific problems and teach "best practices" techniques. This is his fifth book on digital imaging and graphics software.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

About O'Reilly Media For over 25 years, O'Reilly Media has illuminated the spaces where innovation, creativity, and technology converge. Nowhere is this more exciting than in the rapidly expanding sphere of creative media, specifically digital photography, graphics, video, audio, and illustration. From in-depth tutorials and comprehensive references to techniques cookbooks and creative guides, O'Reilly connects you to the technologies--and the leading experts--in print, online, and in person. Visit digitalmedia.oreilly.com.

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About the Author

Barry Huggins' design work and digital imagery has been used by clients throughout Europe, the USA, and the Far East. In recent years the demand for intensive professional training led Barry to form his own multimedia training and consultancy company, www.maxitraining.com. The success of his techniques in one-to-one and group training courses have resulted in offers to deliver his ideas and methodology to a wider audience. This is his fifth book on digital imaging and graphics software.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100302
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100308
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #379,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Cookbook Approach to Photoshop, October 28, 2005

By 

V. Maciulski - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers: 113 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Improve Your Photos and Create Special Effects (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

When I saw that O'Reilly would be coming out with a series of "Cookbooks" related to the digital arts, I was intrigued. This book did not disappoint. It is 10 inches wide - wide enough to display lots of photos, which are plentiful.

It really is set up like a cookbook. There are 113 recipes divided into 11 groupings with names like: Exposure Correction, Color Correction, Focus Manipulation, Lighting Effects, Photo Restoration, Traditional Darkroom Techniques and Photo compositing Techniques. Each of the groupings contains some recipes.

The Retouching Landscapes grouping has recipes for Interesting Skies, Removing Unwanted Objects, Correcting Perspective, etc. Traditional Darkroom Techniques has the most recipes, with 9. There are recipes for Creating Film Grain, Hand-tinting, Cross-processing, Reticulation effects and more.

I was impressed with the multiple techniques for Correcting Perspective (page 84) and Replacing Color (page 92). The recipes for Revitalizing Faded Photographs (page 150) and Recreating Damaged Areas are worth the price of the book alone. We all have those old faded and damaged photos needing repair. And I will be using the recipes for emulating Starburst Filters (page 97) soon.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars if you already have photoshop training... look to better books, March 3, 2007

By 

blair "masterblair" (West Hollywood, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers: 113 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Improve Your Photos and Create Special Effects (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

The book is ok for what it is. One to two pages of how to do different tecniques to your photos...but if you have any training in basic photoshop you will know most of this stuff. Changing contrast? Making a picture dark enough to look like it is at night? Using layers to import one picture into another and masking out other parts? Using the clone tool to copy from one area and cover up another area? getting rid of red eye using the 'red eye tool'? Very simplistic stuff...and I am only a novice at photoshop. They do cover a section on using raw pictures from your digital camera... I think that covers about 10 pages. For the cost you could find great books on using photography and photoshop. Although visually filled with information with big pictures and small amounts of print...it is great in that area of display...but for the money I would suggest you get "Photoshop CS2 - One On One" by Deke (it will teach you all these tecniques (and comes with a CD of the artwork so you can work with what you are learning) plus teach you how to use PhotoShop. If you want to get a good book on Photo Retouching with Photoshop... I would reccomend "Commercial Photoshop Retouching - In the Studio" by Glenn Honiball. He has been doing Phtoo Retouching for 20+ years and teaches you to use tried but true tecniques that moset every professional uses without all the bells and whistles (you can use just about any photoshop program for these) These two books are a better bang for your buck.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Cookbook for Common Photo Retouching Needs, November 20, 2005

By 

Don R. Hanson II (Beaverton, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop Retouching Cookbook for Digital Photographers: 113 Easy-to-Follow Recipes to Improve Your Photos and Create Special Effects (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

This is an excellent cookbook that follows the traditional format. Recipes are logically grouped into easy-to-understand categories, e.g. Strengthening Color, Saturating Color and Working with Color Casts (getting rid of those tints) are covered under the Color Correction category.

The categories cover a wide gamut including; Retouching Portraits, Retouching Landscapes, Exposure Correction, Color Effects and Photo Restoration.

The recipes for more common photo re-touching problems describe a spectrum of ways to fix the problem using different Photoshop tools, generally ranging from light re-touching to methods for fixing larger problems.

One of the main reasons I really liked this book is the selection of recipes covers just about everything I've ever wanted to fix in my own digital photos. I'm not a professional photographer but I have been using digital cameras for several years. I've bought a number of books on using Photoshop to retouch images. None of them are as complete as this one. All of the ways (that I remember) in which I've either screwed up a picture or wanted to touch one up are covered in the book.

These include; Removing red eye & changing eye color, Enhancing lips, Removing skin blemishes and wrinkles, Removing unwanted objects, Removing dust and scratches (from old photos), to a large number of exposure and color related problems.

This book does not cover how to use Photoshop, but if you're slightly familiar with Photoshop you should be fine. I would recommend this book to anyone has taken a digital picture that would be perfect "if only I could fix that one ..."