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Photoshop Type Effects

by Roger Pring

From New Riders Publishing
(c) 2002 Ilex Press Limited
ISBN 0-7357-1190-9
224 pps, w/ CD
$45 (US), $69.99 (CAN) UK £34.99

Review by Gary Coyne

Intended user: Intermediate to Advanced.

The second thing that strikes you about this book as you thumb through it is that the Table of Contents is a screenshot of each of the 80 type effects and a page number. Yes, the effects also have names, but those become secondary when the actual images are standing there for you to select from. This is good and should set standards for these types of books.

[The first thing you will notice with this books is that it's bigger than most books. At 9" by 10.25", the extra 1/2" and 1/4" doesn't seem like it should be so enormous, but it is.]

The author, Roger Pring, makes a strong point that not only what you say can make a difference, but how what you say is presented. This is why there are hundreds of thousands of fonts out there and it's why Photoshop can alter each and every font a hundred thousand ways. There are reasons why a circus font is not used at mortuaries and why a wood effect is not used as the font for a cement factory.

The Introduction Chapter includes a lot of good, general information on how to use the text and typography tool capabilities within Photoshop. The rest of the lessons are grouped by general concept and are otherwise not in any order. One lesson plan is not contingent upon what you learned in a previous lesson.

But be advised that this book is neither for the beginner nor any Photoshop user with a short patience: While the ideas are generally good, Roger's writing and explaining are not.

The author is inconsistent and/or inaccurate in how he presents information: in one lesson he will explain where to find a given tool (e.g., "Use Filter > Sketch > Chrome") while in others he just tells you to use a tool (e.g., in "Venom" he tells you to use the "fill tool," (maybe he means the Paint Bucket tool?). While his information is accurate, there are a sufficient amount of holes in the information that I found myself struggling all too often trying to follow his procedures. Once completed. I could look back and see that what he wrote was correct, but often lacking in complete information.

Learning this stuff should be fun, not a struggle.

Another problem was that occasionally he would not relate information in a consistent order, or he would leave off important information. In the lesson "Absolute Zero," Roger has you going from Channels to Layers and back and has you performing various operations but doesn't say which palette you should be doing what operation in. As a matter of pride, I had to complete this lesson and finally did (I got it on the 4th try). And, as before, all the information was there, but it wasn't all that clear to me.

Working with this book turned out to be more a lesson in frustration because much of the information contained therein is arguably very good.

The CD that comes with the book contains every sample used in the book. Thoughtfully, each image is identified with a page number so that associating any lesson with the original file is very easy, and they are blocked out by chapter.

Regrettably, although the various fonts used in each example are identified (in the text), they are not included with the CD. From a copyright standpoint I fully understand. However, it might have been nice to have two versions for each file, one with the font data and one with a rasterized or path version of the font. While neither of these options are necessarily as good as the original font, they would suffice. As it was, many of the examples I opened gave font warnings (and I own a lot of fonts).

Another thing you might also feel to be missing on the CD would be examples of extra images called for in some of the lessons. For example, in "Utterly Routed," a texture of wood is required and the author recommends the reader to find one from a clip art CD. Actually, Roger has 4 nice examples on the CD for this lesson--they are hidden in the sample. If you need any extra image that the author calls for, just look in that lesson file--you may find them.

I believe there are two primary problems with this book. First off, it doesn't appear that anyone gave the book to a Photoshop user and asked them to try it out. Secondly, the author and/or the publisher felt it necessary to maintain the structure of two (facing) pages for each lesson. This just didn't work. Some of these projects may be capable of being limited to the two pages, but many of them could have easily been expanded to 3 or 4 pages. By trying to compact the information down, the reader is left to flounder around with occasionally scant information, or more information than is necessary. Although, it is more typically the former than the latter.

If you are patient, there are some excellent tricks and techniques to be learned from this book. Be advised and forewarned that some of these lessons may be more of a struggle than is worth the effort.

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