Photoshop 6 Effects Magic - Softcover

Spanning four sections, the book covers painting techniques, photographic techniques, image manipulation, and compositing techniques. Each section contains at least five tutorials, and all are in full color and richly illustrated. While the book is not platform-specific, many of the techniques described in the "Painting Techniques" section, for example, are dependent on a graphics tablet. If you use Photoshop for freehand illustration, you're probably already using one. If not, you can still use many of the techniques described with a mouse, albeit with less control.

Creating painterly illustrations from photographs in a sketch or watercolor style is well covered, as are manipulating and retouching photographs to change atmosphere, create multilayered compositions, or add depth or style. Compositing techniques using Photoshop's live effects give a designer great latitude, and the tutorials using text and live effects are especially worthwhile.

The Magic series of books from New Riders Publishing is an outstanding collection, with no expense spared in layout or production. Photoshop 6 Effects Magic holds its own in this distinguished series, and is a valuable handbook to have at your fingertips. --Mike Caputo

One of the questions we get a lot at New Riders is in the vein of “When are you going to do a Magic series book on (name your favorite tool or technology).” With Photoshop, it’s been a foregone conclusion that we’d do Photoshop Effects Magic; we simply waited for version 6 before doing so (5.5 didn’t really offer too many changes over 6.0 for these purposes). We hooked up with two of the best Photoshop veterans in the industry, Rhoda Grossman and Sherry London, who in turn contacted several of their peers—Photoshop experts in the highest regard—and Photoshop 6 Effects Magic is what we’ve come up with. This is a book of varied perspectives and techniques, designed for all levels of users to come back to again and again for inspiration as well as for instruction. Perhaps even a bit of kibbitzing (“How would someone else do a certain technique that’s different from my approach?” you might be asking....).

There are so many uses for Photoshop that there’s no way we could ever make this book comprehensive, but we’ve tried. (although if you want to drill straight into using Photoshop shop for web design, we’ve also create Photoshop 6 Web Magic). To that end, let us know what type of material you’d want to see in another book like this... if we get enough responses, who’s to say we couldn’t do volume II?