Don't let the name mislead you. This is not a book just about Photoshop. This is a book on how Photoshop is a tool in creating interesting, unusual and most of all unique images.

If I had to recommend this book to one group of professionals it would be hands down for photographers. But by no means am I saying it's only for photographers. Anyone interested in using Photoshop to create realistic composite images can use this book. 

The book teaches us how to use Photoshop's powerful tools to create stunning and lifelike compositions. More importantly John Lund teaches us it all starts with good photography. John teaches that planning your photo shoot before the actual shoot day can lead to a more productive shoot, more interesting images and saving time when compositing your images. 

Just thumbing through the book is a great way to get the creative juices flowing. I found myself saying that's cool, awe that's cool too all the way through the book.

As I'm sure you've heard a million times the devil is in the detail. The same can be said for a good Photoshop composite. Often everyone focuses on the main/biggest part of an image to make a Photoshop composite believable, but for some reason it never quite looks natural. The reason why, it's the little things that's often overlooked but makes all the difference in the world when creating believable composites. Simple things like lighting, shadows and focused blurring/sharpening in the right spot that genuinely gives the illusion of reality.

I'm a big fan of "real" work examples. Anyone with a working knowledge of image editing software can read a book blend a couple of images and say this is how to use Photoshop to create a good composition. But I want to see real world examples. This is why I love the gallery in the back of Photoshop Compositing. John has several of his composites in the book with a brief description of how, why and who the image was created for.

The only knock I have is, it would have been nice to have had, a little more detail on how to actually perform some of the Photoshop methods John used. Overall I give Photoshop Compositing with John Lund 4.5 stars out of 5. I really like the fact that its not a cover to cover book, which makes it the perfect reference book, you can simply thumb through find a chapter that's interesting and go from there.