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Photoshop Studio

by Bert Monroy

From New Riders Publishing
(c) 2002 New Riders Publishing
ISBN 0-7357-1246-8
247 pps
$45 (US), $69.99 (CAN) UK £34.99

Review by Gary Coyne

Intended user: Intermediate to Advanced.

Have you ever seen a photograph and thought it would make a great painting? Have you ever seen a painting and thought "Wow, that's almost like a photograph?" This book gives you the opportunity to create such works of art.

At a remarkably large 10" x 10", this book shows how to create an image and manipulate it to make it look "real." Sort of like looking at some of the new computer generated movies, it looks real--mostly. Why would you want to do that? Well, for one reason, it adds to one's capabilities as a Photoshop user. It means you are not limited as to how the photograph/scan came out. On a more simplistic level, going through the exercises in this book will teach you many techniques on how to use brushes, paths, shadows, and many of the filters found in Photoshop.

However, when you consider that the image on the book's cover is not a photograph, but rather the result of the author's artwork, you can begin to see the potential of what the author is starting to share.

The chapters are designed to introduce the reader to all the aspects and capabilities of Photoshop as an art-creation program. The first chapter introduces you to some of the new features of Photoshop 7 and some of the specific features that will be explored in subsequent chapters. At this point mentioning the chapter names is quite appropriate:

• 1 - Off to a Good Start
• 2 - The Art of Brush Making
• 3 - A greener World: Creating Foliage
• 4 - Lights and Shadows
• 5 - What's It Made Of? Creating Textures
• 6 - Creating the Elements
• 7 - Reflections
• 8 - Bending Things a Bit

Also used within the book is the integration of Photoshop with Adobe Illustrator. In fact, Illustrator is such an important factor in some of the chapters that unless you have, or are planning on purchasing Illustrator, this may not be that good of a book for you. On the other hand, the types of graphics being done in this book imply that you already have, or already have plans for obtaining Illustrator. But fear not, this is a Photoshop book not an Illustrator book.

One of the fun things about this book is an appreciation of of the authors attention to detail. For example, in the chapter on shadows, the author shows how a chain's shadow would fall upon the ground. But, he points out how the shadow would also fall upon a horizontal support bar of a sign. In the picture used to explain/display this subject, the actual shadow in discussion here is very small--a detail that might easily be missed. But if it were missed, the picture would be short of a detail that would otherwise cause it to appear "off." "It's good Martha. There's something about it that just ain't quite right, not sure what, but it's good nontheless." With Bert's guidance, the proceeding sentence will not be said of your work.

Bert Monroy is a good teacher. His explanations cut right to the chase but do not let the reader feel rushed or needing extra explanations. My only regret is that the book's web site does not provide any copies of the images seen in the book to experiment/play around with. While I do understand that the author's goal is for the reader to strive to re-create these images from scratch (that is, after all, how he did it), it would have been a handy aspect to have a "proper image" in front of one's face to follow. But this is a quibble: if you want to do these types of images, this is one of the best books I've seen to teach you how to do it.

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