Customer Reviews

Photoshop CS Trickery & FX (Charles River Media Graphics)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is without a doubt the best. It actually teaches you why and how Photoshop works. Rather than tell you what to do to acheive an effect, it explaines why you go through the steps to get the result you want. This way you actually learn how to manipulate Photoshop on your own. It speaks to you on a level that almost anyone can learn and comprehend. I went through this book and CD as if it were a text book and learned more than I have from any other source. If you want to learn how to use Photoshop, then this is the course I recomend.

Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing, Computer Books: General, Photoshop has usually been viewed as a way to do fairly mundane tasks: cleaning up a picture to change the background perhaps, or adding a highlight, and of course there's the long established practice of putting someone else's head on a different body.

This book goes far beyond that with the view that the computer screen is your bare canvas and suitable for building any kind of image that you can visualize. In many cases the author starts with a standard picture but then modifies it into something entirely different, perhaps just using Photoshop effects, perhaps combining other images into the first. An example is converting the image of a model into that of a cat like being. In other cases he starts with a blank screen and creates the entire image, in one case a spiral galaxy.

In the past photography had to fight a battle to be viewed as an art form. Now that battle is being fought with computer generated imagery. This book is a cannon shot into understanding computer generated art.

If your into Photoshop and are at the intermediate level or more, this book can help a lot. It is full of interesting techniques. I'm very glad I purchased it.

I found this book amazing, it teaches you some tricks and special effects you won't find anywhere else. Definitely for a more advanced user, however if you are knowledgeable about the basics you will learn a lot. My only complaint is within 3 days of use the book fell apart. I now have 3 sections that tore off from the book that I need to refer to. Perhaps it was just my luck to get one with a binding whose glue was missing; whatever for such a great book its sad it is in pieces on my bookshelf.


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A well designed book, not for the beginner but straight forward enough to clearly understand the process. The design of the book stimulates and enhances the creative juices with enough information to help you to move on to newer and bigger things. I would certainly recommend this book.

This was one of the rare books that really explain how to make art with Photoshop! I love that the images he uses are hi res on the CD that comes with the book!
Debbi

Stephen Burns has been teaching Photoshop for years and has great credentials in the industry. When I saw he had a book out on Photoshop in the areas I was looking to get information on... this book became a no brainier. As I thought it would this book was exactly what I needed and went way beyond. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of Photoshop or looking to provide their customers with more professional looking digital work.

As the title states cs trickery & FX it all starts here I bought this book to see what it was about since I already had the additional writings on this subject
well anyone who followed the series should absolutely read this and a lot of the followup will make absolute sense the rest of the books are a lot easier to understand
the begining is the begining and it helps to start there

I know photoshop fairly well (intermediate) and I find this book very advanced. The instructions are also difficult to follow, and what I got onscreen didn't follow what they got. You have to already have some understanding of masks and channels to begin with to grasp the concepts, and even then I found it hard. I would only buy this book if you want to learn advanced techniques that the average person will never use or remember.