Beyond Digital Photography:
Transforming Photos into Art using Photoshop and Painter
It took over two years to put this book together due to many unforseen problems and interruptions in the lives of both authors, but Cher Threinen-Pendarvis and I released our joint effort in June, 2009. The scope of the book isn't exactly your average "Joe" on the street, but rather novice to advanced Photoshop and Painter users, so it's never going to be a massive seller, but the professional reviews have been most gratifying. This one is rather exuberant, for example:
"All in all a smoking book. The next time you are about to spend 500 bucks on a workshop…cancel your trip, hole up in your studio or a hotel room for the weekend with your computer, Wacom tablet and this book. You will be glad you did."
–Digital Paint Magazine
The goal for writing this book was to teach readers some of the many techniques both Cher and I have developed over the years to take the "out-of-the-box" programs to extremes as we emulated traditional medias within the digital environment. Cher has been one of the foremost Painter experts and teachers in the U.S. (and world, for that matter), while I've steadily built a firm reputation for my advanced Photoshop techniques that don't always use conventional methods. As Cher taught around the country and in Europe, she would field questions from both artists and photographers wanting to take their work further than they could in a simple workshop. This book was the answer to their requests.
As always, Cher's writing is superb and her book layout is gorgeous (one of her beautiful exercises from the book is featured on the cover, pictured above). The book was her brainchild and she nurtured it from proposal to a completed work. After she developed the outline of the book, we divided the labor primarily along application lines, with Cher taking Painter while I took Photoshop and Photoshop Camera Raw, although there is some crossover. At the beginning of the book we start at a novice level, gradually working our way into more difficult work. Early chapters mostly work with using filters and layers and as the book progresses the work moves gradually more complex and intuitive. The further into the book one moves the more one's artistic hand and brush skills come into play, while at the same time the technical information becomes progressively advanced. By the time one pulls off a Photoshop watercolor that looks AMAZINGLY like an actuall watercolor, the reader had better have some chops.
In the last chapter I reveal some of my deepest, darkest Photoshop secrets of how I achieve some pretty outstanding work using custom brushes, amazing layering techniques and some unusual ways of shifting colors and building effects, all the while using a ridiculous self-portrait I took in my front yard and putting myself at the bottom of a lake. I had to think long and hard as to whether I wanted to share some of the things in this book, particularly in this individual chapter, but in the end decided that knowing the how is only half the battle, but knowing the when completes the artist.
In the end, I give this book seven out of five stars and three thumbs up, and recommend highly that you purchase at least a couple of copies for yourself in addition to all of the Christmas present copies you order for friends and family.
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| For an extensive review of Beyond Digital Photography, here is an article by Bob Nolin at Digital Image Magazine. |
