Book Reviews

 Greetings. I've only been to three D-MAG meetings as an official member and I've won two awesome prizes. If you're just now stumbling upon our little tribe here, I highly recommend coming to check it out. Awesome prizes like this one are just part of the reason why...

                Creative Photoshop CS4 Digital Illustration and Art Techniques (Focal Press, ISBN: 978-0-240-52134-3) was the first fortune to befall me as a D-MAG member. I call it a fortune because it approximately four-hundred pages of pure gold. Yo-ho-ho...

I Love this book and wish I had studied it during Illustrator CS4 class. Included is a DVD-ROM that contains video tutorials and downloadable art that can be used to follow along with examples enabling readers to fully digest the concepts present by Von Clitschka. While it felt like an insult to learn that I am a tooler, "someone who doesn't neccessarily want to improve her drawing skills", I am thankful to learn successful vector building techniques.

How to Cheat in Photoshop CS5 is an great book and I would recommend it to any experienced Photoshop user. The title “to cheat” refers to working smarter, faster and with more believable results. This is not a beginners how-to book, it is definitely for the intermediate to advanced Photoshop user and there is the assumption that the reader already has basic knowledge of Photoshop.

Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-On-One provides a comprehensive and engaging introduction to the unique world of Adobe Illustrator.

Learning Illustrator can be a challenge for those who are used to Photoshop, but those looking to get accustomed to Adobe’s vector graphics package need look no further than Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One. At nearly 500 pages, Illustrator One-on-One covers all of AI CS5’s core features, from starting a new file, to using Illustrator’s diverse toolset, all the way to preparing artwork for print. Illustrator is more than just the pen tool, and One-on-One provides an excellent introduction to dynamic effects, gradient mesh, and OpenType, among other features.

3D in Photoshop: The Ultimate Guide for Creative Professionals is a fantastic introduction to creating 3D images in Adobe Photoshop CS5. One of my favorite things about this book is the fact that it covers, in length, each feature of the 3D menu, describes the different materials and mesh features, how cameras and lights function, and gives many examples of each before even starting the first tutorial. There is a wealth of information here, especially for users who have never operated with 3D mechanics in Photoshop or other programs.

Adobe introduced 3D tools to photoshop in Creative Suite 3. Since then, each release has improved upon and included new 3D tools and features. In Photoshop CS5, Adobe introduced a new feature called Repousse, which is used to extrude objects in 3D in new ways. This book covers the Repousse feature in-depth. As a part of this review, I completed one of the Repousse tutorials, and will be sharing the beginning steps and the final product.

Illustrator revealed is a great instructional book for the novice to intermediate learner. It's full color throughout and well laid out with an unusual 9 1/8" by 7 3/8" aspect ratio. A CD of the project files are included with the book which you can use to follow along or you can create your own as you work your way through the book. As previously stated, this book is intended for the beginner, although an intermediate user would probably find merit in the book as well. I think a proficient user would need a more challenging experience and would not recommend this book to them. However, this book does cover the objectives necessary for Adobe Illustrator ACE Certification and a chart is included in the appendix to indicate where an objective is covered within the book.

First, he means what he says: You really should have CS5 installed to do the exercises in this book. This isn’t to say you won’t get anything out of it if you don’t (and I don’t), but approximately thirty percent of the book is CS5 specific.

This is a book for beginners through intermediate users; advanced users will find this a nice gift for someone. For instance here is how the chapter descriptions read:

Chapter 1: Opening and organizing files, including the Adobe Bridge, ratings, workspaces, stacks, metadata, keywords, and the Batch Rename command.

I began using Photoshop around version 5 and I think I know it pretty well. But Photoshop is wide and deep. To get the most out of it after you install Photoshop, it's wise to spend some time with the manual or a good book. The learning experience will take some time: days, weeks, months. Martin Evening's book will make the journey easier. He is a top notch photographer who has for years rubbed shoulders with Adobe's developers of Photoshop.

I recently won the book, Masters Collection: Volume 1, Digital Painting Techniques published by Focal Press at the Digital Media Arts Group monthly raffle.  I was really thrilled that I won this book because I wanted to learn more about digital painting and using my Wacom Tablet.  Focal Press has published an entire series of books devoted to the art of digital painting.  This volume is the first in a series.

Pulling from the realm of artists from all over the world, Focal Press has collected the best of the best to cover a wide variety of topics in art and digital painting.  Focal Press, as many other publishers do, has made a good group of resources available for download for you to use when following along in the book.

The book covers eight chapters: