Review: How To Cheat In Photoshop Elements 8
Ian Waugh investigates the concept of cheating, purely in the interests of art...
| Product | How To Cheat In Photoshop Elements 8 |
|---|---|
| Company | Focal Press |
| Web | www.focalpress.com |
| Price | $39.95 £22.99 |
| We like | Covers Elements 3-8, Sample files on CD, Superb range of ideas |
| We don't like | Not for total beginners |
| Rating | 9/10 |
| Requirements |
The recent release of Photoshop Elements 8 seems to have triggered a spate of books about it. Not so much about how to use it but how to do cool things with it.
Although Photoshop CS itself is regarded as the de facto Pro graphic software, Elements is as powerful in most areas, mainly lacking Photoshop's prepress features. It's just as intricate and capable of creating stunning graphics effects.
Your Cheating Art
The 'Cheat' in the title of the book refers to making images look like genuine photographs and in doing so using the quickest possible method. The book essentially contains around 80 step-by-step projects which you can flick through and dip into as you wish.
You don't have to read the book from beginning to end but the first four chapters deal with the essential techniques you need to perform the operations in the rest of the book. These included the various ways of selecting part of an image and working with selections.
Many of the projects in the book are about creating montages, and layers play an essential part here so a section of the book is devoted to the creation and processing of layers. Photoshop CS has layer masks which Elements lacks. However, the book describes a work-around and also notes that you can import Photoshop documents with a layer mask into Elements and retain their properties! There's such a file on the accompanying CD.
Process This
The four introductory chapters describe several effects as they work through the basics. Then there are another eight chapters, a fascinating reservoir of ideas you can apply to your own images. They broadly cover the following areas - light and shade, transformations, textures, text, people and animals, shiny surfaces, 3D, and printing and the internet.
Each reader will have their favourites but here are a few of our highlights: making a rainbow, adding snow, changing skies, adding fire to an image, making curves and folds, wrapping images around a curved surface, creating wood grain and old paper, creating stained glass, adding reflections to a surface, and that ever-popular process -switching heads on photos!
Many montages fail because they don't look natural but they can often be improved by adding shadows, blending the two images with Gaussian Blur and adjusting the opacity of a layer.
There's also a section on print matching - making the printed image the same as the one you see on screen - without expensive monitor and printer calibration equipment.
Each project covers a two-page spread with instructions and photographs of the processes involved.
Being Creative
How To Cheat In Photoshop Elements 8 may seem to be aimed at the 'creative photographer' but anyone who performs any kind of image manipulation will find it useful, not only for the techniques it discusses but also for the plethora of ideas you can apply to your own photographs and images.
Most of the techniques can be used with Elements version 3 onwards although some do require more recent versions. The accompanying CD includes all the sample images used in the book along with shapes, layer styles, and smart brushes, and a few videos illustrating some of the projects.
For a highly illustrated book, with CD, it's reasonably priced but Amazon gives you even more for your money by saving you around 40% off the RRP.
Highly recommended.
