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.

The effect we are trying to achieve is a light ray type of effect. I started off entering some text against a black background.  This is so the light rays will have something to contrast against.  The next step is to flip the text horizontally, but that is to reverse an effect Repousse creates, explained in greater detail in the book. The next step is to open Repousse, under the 3D menu, which is illustrated below.

The actual Repousse menu is shown below.

After entering the correct settings, the image is going to look a bit strange...

There are several other steps necessary for achieving the look desired, but for the purposes of brevity in this review, and as I have covered Repousse above, I will post my final image below.

Here you have the final image after being ray traced. The effect looks very nice. Until Photoshop CS5, it would have been much more difficult to create this sort of effect with the 3D menu. I can attest to this, as I tried this tutorial first in CS4 with no luck. 

This is only one of the many tutorials featured in 3D in Photoshop: The Ultimate Guide for Creative Professionals. Other tutorial focus on lighting, texture overlay's, and working with 3D object imported from other programs. I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone wanting to expand upon their 3D knowledge, and especially to those who are just starting out with 3D.