Extreme Photoshop CS | Matt Kloskowski | Wonderful and inspirational!

Extreme Photoshop CS | Matt Kloskowski | It shows shows you the WHY as well as the How. That's Important

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Extreme Photoshop CS

	Extreme Photoshop CS Matt Kloskowski friends of ED, 2004 - 345 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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In this book, Matt Kloskowski walks you through some of the most popular styles and techniques in professional Photoshop design and illustration today. Through step-by-step tutorials and in-depth explanations, he deconstructs those styles and techniques. Matt gives you insight, tips, and industry advice throughout the entire process to help you step outside of Photoshop and understand the big picture of illustration. Topics such as photorealism, stylization, and retro and cartoon artwork are discussed and exercises lend real-world experience to help you make the jump from Photoshop user to professional designer. This book will also arm you with the necessary knowledge and tools to build a graphic library of your own so you can quickly and effectively create quality graphic designs and illustrations for your clients. If you are an aspiring designer looking to get into the graphics industry, this book will enable you to create artwork for your portfolio that demonstrates a range of in-demand illustration styles. If you are already working with Photoshop professionally, it will help you expand your repertoire of styles and help you become a better designer. Summary of Contents: Introduction to Photoshop and Realism Exercises in Photoshop and Realism Professional Realism Techniques Pixel Art Cartoon Illustration Silhouette Illustration Wireframe Illustration Vectorizing Photographs Retro / Vintage Art Building your Retro Art Library

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Wonderful and inspirational!

Photoshop has been known for years as one of the most capable and powerful software packages available. Each iteration to the present Photoshop CS version has gotten more and more powerful and feature-rich. For many people, Photoshop is frighteningly hard to learn and use beyond mere photo editing - tonal and color adjustment, cropping, retouching, and the like. However, for those who know how to take advantage of its power, it is an amazing tool for creating original images.

Matt Kloskowski, the author of "Extreme Photoshop CS", is one such knowledgeable person. In the small handful of creative exercises contained in the book, he demonstrates how creative and efficient one can be with Photoshop in producing original realistic and photo-realistic images. There are nearly a dozen extended-length exercises in this handsomely-produced, well-illustrated, full-color book of 401 pages (including index). Each exercise is a step-by-step demonstration of the use of some of Photoshop's many tools and features by a master creative artist to make realistic and cartoon and comic book-style images. The book's text and illustrations about Photoshop CS will make sense for both PC and Mac users.

Make no mistake about it, even thorough and expert knowledge of Photoshop itself is insufficient to create such images. Software tools, even great ones, cannot substitute for the "artist's eye" and artistic talent. In one exercise early in the book, the author shows step-by-step how to create a photo-realistic image of a fishbowl illuminated by natural light from a blank canvas using Photoshop tools requiring a bare minimum of what we conventionally think of as artist's skills - drawing, brushing, and texturing. There are 49 steps in creating the finished fish bowl, and even for novice Photoshop users like myself, each and every one seems fairly simple to duplicate. No special manual or advanced graphic software talent seems required. However, taking a step back and comparing the blank canvas starting point to the finished product produces a sense of wonderment. There is no way a novice user like myself could create such a finished product without the actual step-by-step guidance of an accomplished artist. The untrained or unskilled artist-wannabe could hardly perceive, artistically, the structural perspectives, lighting patterns, reflections, refractions, and more - much less produce realistic results even with Photoshop's wonderful tools.

Kloskowski is an established illustrator and graphic designer and an Adobe-certified expert. He has written several design-related books, as well as written columns for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, Mac Design, and other publications. In this book, he shows how Photoshop can aid those already blessed with an innate or trained "artist's eye" to produce high quality images quickly and efficiently. This book is not meant to be a traditional user's manual on Photoshop. Although a fair number of tools and features are described and explained, there is no thorough exploration of all that Photoshop has to offer. This is also not a book on how to draw or paint or even "see" like an artist. It is more of a blending of these themes to demonstrate how Photoshop is useful for people who have not experienced the power of digital tools.

This book is not intended to make anyone an expert on Photoshop itself. The author merely states what tools, settings, and work flow sequences he uses to make his images. There is more of a demonstrative or inspirational intent here than teaching detailed knowledge of the software.

Instead, the author describes how to use the software to quickly and relatively easily create (for experienced Photoshop users) a variety of image types. For each type, but especially for the realistic and photo-realistic styles, Kloskowski elucidates the traditional artistic elements necessary to make 2D productions which imply 3D scenes. For nature images, for example, he describes the need for perspective (linear and atmospheric), shadows, reflection, depth of field, and color rendition. These are the artistic building blocks of an effective image. From that basis, he demonstrates which tools and features of Photoshop are most relevant for implementing those effects.

A secondary theme is an emphasis on being efficient in building an image. Perhaps it is the author's business and client-related experience which has focused him on the quick and efficient production of images. This is accomplished by planning the construction of images with future editing in mind and the reusability of components of an image, including constructed shapes, patterns, adjustment layers, and more.

"Extreme Photoshop CS" has four parts which detail how to create original art from scratch emphasizing a number of different styles - realistic, photo-realistic, realistic 3D, cartoon and comic book looks, icons and emoticons, silhouette, wireframe illustrations and stylized photo images. The most used tools include the pen to create vector shapes, the brush to add textures, and the blending modes for tonal and color adjustments. When used by an expert, surprisingly few of Photoshop's many tools are needed to create realistic original images.

Part One focuses on tools and techniques to create realism. Complementing the information on the relevant tools and settings is discussion of how to create lifelike scenes on a two-dimensional surface. The key is in the artist's understanding of how to create the illusions of depth, motion, and texture utilizing traditional artistic concepts of perspective, light and shadow, relative spacing, color relationships and the like.

Part Two moves into a different type of realism - cartoon and comic book styles. Here, the intent is not to create "trompe l'oeil" realistic or photo-realistic but to make stylized natural imagery for different looks and effects. Here the most relevant tools are the pencil and various selection tools. The blending of aesthetics and computer is again shown in the extended presentation of what Kloskowski calls the "mathematics of pixel art". Here he shows how to use defined shapes, grids, angles, and layers to precisely structure parts of images and to create custom text.

Chapter Six contains two shorter exercises on how to create anthropomorphic icons and emoticons. In less than two dozen steps each, he creates remarkable images using a small handful of PhotoShop tools. It is the combination of software and artistic skill which is inspiring. Chapter Seven contains descriptions and examples of a variety of cartoon and comic book styles and an extended exercise in creating a manga-style cartoon character.

Part 3 demonstrates advanced illustration techniques using Photoshop. The aesthetic subjects are silhouettes, wire frame, and stylized photographs. Part Four shows how to create retro and vintage art images including art deco, Bauhaus/Constructivist, and pop art -Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol style. The final chapter describes how to build a reusable library of retro design components, such as shapes as building blocks, fonts, patterns, and color palettes.

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It shows shows you the WHY as well as the How. That's Important

I saw the review tearing the book down for just teaching lessons. True it teaches you to do things...but if you read the writers Introduction part of the book he explains that too many manuals show you how to do stuff. BUT not how to put the things you learn together and use it practically for day to day work. (and even to use in your portfolio)

This authors trying to teach you to think AND learn. Something the previous reviewer missed. I found the book at the bookstore, looked it over from stem to stern and came home to order it at Amazon. Even my roommate who does 3-D graphic work said it was well put together.

And 1/3 of the book has interviews with people working in the field. That is great to learn from the people whom are already there.

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Fantastic

I love all the Photoshop books that walk you through step by step and you don't have to use the authors graphics on their CD. I like that I can learn the technique step by step and use my own designs.
I recommend to any one that likes the Down and Dirty Tricks by Scott Kelby to get this book too.

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