Artistic Techniques with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter: A Guide for Photographers (Paperback)

by Deborah Ferro (Author) "When using Photoshop or Painter for artistic design, it is essential to have the best tools available to you with the latest, up-to-date technology to..." (more)
Key Phrases: retouched layer, layers palette, retouched image, Dry Brush, Healing Brush, Diffuse Glow (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Photographers will be able to magically transform photographic images in myriad ways using the digital counterpart of traditional artists' tools and this guide to Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. Covering hardware and software requirements, printing actions that will simplify the output process, instructions for adjusting a digital image's canvas size, and other essentials, this manual explains all the skills needed to rev up one's creative arsenal and begin outputting extraordinary and artful images. This handbook is a perfect complement to photographers with a traditional arts background as well as those who are ready to create special niche products to set their images apart.

About the Author

Deborah Ferro is a professional photographer and studio owner. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Amherst Media, Inc.; illustrated edition edition (August 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584281650
• ISBN-13: 978-1584281658
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #700,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book of Concepts, of Ideas, of What Can Be Done, November 2, 2005

By	John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In film photography there are a lot of things you can do in the darkroom to change the resulting picture quite dramatically. With digital photography and the powerful digital image processing tools that have become available you have even more capabilities in your 'digital darkroom' inside the computer. You can literally go in and change a single pixel in the image.

This book is on processing digital photographs to convert them from a picture into fine art. This book promises to teach you everything you want to know from how to buy a computer through the production of fine-art. And it sort of does do that. She says your windows computer should have 'at the very least 256 MB of RAM.' RAM is cheap, 256 MB simply isn't enough, get 512 at the very least and a gigabyte is preferred. They go buy a separate introductory book on Photoshop and Painter, maybe two books.

Use this book, not as a how to use the software book, use it instead as an indication of what can be done. The concepts and techniques she uses illustrate what can be done to make ordinary pictures suitable for posters, free standing illustrations and more.

Her last chapter on selling and marketing your fine-art piece is worth the cost of the book by itself. One point I would add here is, go sell to other photographers. A lot of photography shops have been around for a long time, and are just now changing to digital. You could well find yourself foing some of the kinds of things shown in this book for them.

Finally, while we all want to make money, note the last image in the book. Here is an image of an infant who was not expected to live being held by his mother, still a child herself. The image was displayed at the infant's funeral just a week later.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Artistic Techniques with Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter: a Guide for Photographers, March 19, 2007

By	K. Noble (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was quite disappointed with this book. None of the techniques covered are in any way different from the basics of using filters in Photoshop or cloning in Painter that would be covered in a basic manual. If you want inspiration and instruction in the creative use of these two programs, "Digital Collage and Painting Using Photoshop and Painter to Create Fine Art" by Susan Ruddick Bloom is a much better choice in every way.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You need both programs, and this book., March 9, 2006

By	Milla Sensei (Santa Barbara) - See all my reviews

Corel Painter and Photoshop complement each other, with each having particular strengths that the other does not. This book shows you how to combine the natural media and artistic effects possible with Painter with the retouching and color correction features of Photoshop. You'll find lots of useful techniques, along with step-by-step instructions on how to achieve them.