Surfaces : Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers (MacIntosh compatible) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "This collection of photographs began as my private file of photo research or my work as a scenic artist and designer..." (more)
Key Phrases: ashlar pattern, fine aggregate concrete, extruded brick, New York, Glass Menagerie, Ancient Roman (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Looking for images of architectural materials? Surfaces offers over 1,200 outstanding, vibrantly colorful visual images of surface textures--wood, stone, marble, brick, plaster, stucco, aggregates, metal, tile, and glass--ready to be used in your designs, presentations, or comps, as backgrounds or for general visual information.

Photographed by a designer for designers, these pictures show specific materials and how they change with time, weather, wear, and different lighting. Each section offers general views of the material, a gallery of commonly used or manufactured samples, and hundreds of specimens showing types and finishes in architectural settings. Captions provide information about the physical properties, dimensions, construction techniques, specific varieties of the material, and types and styles of treatments.

Interviews with eight design professionals provide practical advice on how they approach visual research, and a comprehensive glossary of visual and technical terms offers a vocabulary for professional communication. An index of subject matter and materials makes it easy to find just the image you need.
1000 color illustrations.

About the Author

Judy A. Juracek, who lives in Darien, Connecticut, received the 2003 USITT Golden Pen Award for the series.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.; 1st Edition. edition (November 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393730077
• ISBN-13: 978-0393730074
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #249,210 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Additional editing of provided textures is required., March 20, 1998

By A Customer

I bought this book of textures complete with CD to use for scenes in 3D animation. While I was very pleased with the author's range of choices for textures (a fairly complete collection in each category - wood, stone, glass, plaster, etc.) I would like to mention that I had to spend a lot of time in Photoshop editing the textures. Here's why (for future reference): the lighting of the texture elements is uneven and the elements are not cropped evenly. This are crucial elements for successful tiling of textures. Textures should have minimum shadows because the light cast on them in your scene may not match the lighting conditions of the textures original environment. Overall, this is a helpful collection. But the buyer will need to do a lot of editing before using the textures.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Useful Reference Book I Own!, May 21, 1998

By A Customer

This book is a saving grace! As a painter, I'm always spending hours flipping through books, magazines and catalogs to find just the right woodgrain or stucco wall. Ms. Juracek has given us a wonderful gift by putting together this priceless collection of reference photos. The photographs are clear and the lighting serves well to show the texture that we are trying to recreate. I've owned the book for one week and have already referred to it several times for the painting I'm working on. It is definately a worthwhile investment.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great reference for computer graphics texture creation, February 15, 2000

By	old lg (Berkeley, CA) - See all my reviews

This is the book that everybody who writes shaders should have. It's just wall-to-wall reference images of every kind of surface or material you could think of.

I found the CD-ROM to be useless, however, mostly due to the fact that the images are all quantized to a palette of 256 colors each. This makes them completely worthless as texture maps. But that doesn't detract from the fact that the rest of the book is a fantastic visual reference.