How to Cheat in Photoshop CS5: The art of creating realistic photomontages

by Steve Caplin

How to Cheat in Photoshop shows you how to cheat in two important ways. First, you'll learn a professional montage artist's proven-to-be-successful tips for getting the best out of Photoshop's many features quickly and efficiently, so that you can create work under deadline while still maintaining quality. Second, you'll learn how to make an image look like something else entirely, for those moments when stock imagery just won't do and you don't have the time (or funding) to set up a photo shoot. Photomontage master Steve Caplin has been a recognized leader in the world of photo manipulation for many years, and in this invaluable resource for designers, illustrators, retouchers, students, and graphic artists, he shows exactly what methods he uses to create stunning imagery used in advertising, publishing, print media, and more. Fully updated to cover all of the new features in Photoshop CS5, this book is also backwards-compatible and can be used with any version of Photoshop. The accompanying DVD for Mac and PC contains over two and a half hours of video tutorials for additional training, and on the book's popular website www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com, you'll find even more resources such as an "Ask the Author" forum, sample images from other How to Cheat fans, and weekly challenges so that you can test your own skills and see where your creativity can take you.

Genres: Photography, Design

464 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Online Eccentric Librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

More reviews (and no fluff) on the blog http://surrealtalvi.wordpress.com/

This is an excellent resource for refining your Photoshop skills and taking advantage of the changes brought with CS5 (edge work on masks, Content aware fill, etc.). The book is a series of small photo manipulation projects that are meant to be fun rather than artistic. The point is to make the montages as seamless and integrated as possible and I think the author does an excellent job of teaching you how to accomplish that.

I would not recommend this for photoshop beginners but it really is an excellent resource for intermediate photoshop users. Those users tend to have 'holes' in how they learned Photoshop and going through these tutorials is a good way to shore up those holes and really increase your artistic repertoire.

It should be noted for those who have never done photo manipulations that they really are about a lot of tedious work and not something you do in 5 minutes in your spare time (if you want any semblance of realism). The 'cheat' in the title is cheating reality - not time or technique. So be prepared to spend some time with this great resource (which includes a DVD with videos and exercise files) and really learn how to create images with interest beyond that of photo journalism reality.

The book has been extensively updated for CS5 but I did notice some proofing issues - directions not matching images or options/terms from older versions of Photoshop. These were minor but notable - enough to take one star away (though I don't envy the proofer who had to double check the book's integrity).

In all, a great book for those who love Photoshop. Perhaps not for the beginner who wants to take a picture of their child in a tutu and fairy wings and stick it on a mushroom but has no experience of Photoshop or only limited Elements use. But great if you've used the full version of Photoshop and will understand terms like masking and such.