Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers | Christopher Grey

Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers | Christopher Grey | No revolutionary trick

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Photoshop Effects ...

	Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers Christopher Grey Focal Press, 2006 - 152 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Want to offer your clients more to chose from? Here's how: award winning photographer, Christopher Grey, has developed techniques to enhance portrait photography, using the creative applications available in Photoshop. Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers contains detailed explanations of how to replicate many darkroom techniques with Photoshop (Dodging, Burning, Vignettes, etc.) as well as camera and earlier technology techniques (Short Focus, High Speed Film Grain, Hand Coloring, etc.). Grey has also developed almost two dozen ways to replicate traditional painterly and illustrative techniques such as Rough Charcoal Sketch, Wet Watercolor, Silkscreen, and Oil Chalk. Images available for downloading at http://www.ChristopherGrey.com/booksamples.

Key Features
* Each effect is covered in a 2-4 page full color spread for easy comprehension and step-by-step directions
* Effects built with Photoshop CS2, but almost all will work with any version of PS that supports Layers
* Takes some of Photoshop features that are not quite up to par and gives you the tips to take the effect to the next level

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A mediocre book from a good photographer.

The author is quite a good photographer. His other book, "Master Lighting for the Portrait Photographer" is a great book. This book, on the other hand is not only superficial in its instruction of processing (in that it is all step by step without any real explanation of the tools) but many of the methods covered are subpar.

The problem is that over 1/3rd of the book covers extremely gimmicky techniques that no self-respecting photographer would want to use. Examples of such horrendous methods include making your picture look like a lithograph, a linoleum block, a scratchboard, a pencil sketch, a photocopy sketch, a grain sketch, and an impressionist painting. Of the last 54 pages, only 17 of those pages went over worthwhile techniques.

If this book were cheaper, say $10.00 I could easily recommend it. But for $20.00 or so there are much better books available.

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No revolutionary trick

I base my ratings based on how many times a book makes me say "ahhhh" unfortunately this wasn't much in this book.

A bit short

Although the book is a nice read, it does skip details here & there. For experience Photoshop users this is not really a problem though.
The techniques don't go too far, so it's easy enough to blast through the book and read it within a couple of hours.
A few nice techniques though, so if you're really looking for some new effects, there might be something in there.

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