Adobe Photoshop CS2 offers professional and amateur photographers, artists, and designers unprecedented opportunities to manipulate images on their personal computers, but it's a complex application that can take years to master. With Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook, you don't have to be a Photoshop expert to create sophisticated effects. The 61 easy-to-follow, fully illustrated recipes in the book show you how to use Photoshop CS2 to simulate classic camera and darkroom techniques and special effects-without making you first learn Photoshop inside and out.

Author and digital artist Tim Shelbourne has assembled a collection of real-world techniques that you'll be able to apply immediately to your own images, whether you're working on photographs or digital illustrations. Digital files of the examples in the book are available for download, so you can easily follow along as Tim takes you through each recipe.

The book covers:

• Creating graphic art effects: posterization, watercolor, pen and ink, woodcut

• Working with lighting effects: neon glows, lens flares, fire and flame effects

• Simulating natural phenomena: rain, clouds, rainbows, lightning, snow

• Adapting traditional techniques: film grain, contrast masks, hand-tinting

• Adding motion blurs and other special effects

• Simulating textures: stone, metal, glass, plastic

• Making mattes, vignettes, frames, borders, signatures

• Assembling multi-layered images and photomontages

Packed with hundreds of full-color photographs, step-by-step instructions, and at-a-glance panels with many practical tips, Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook is all you need to quickly and easily create professional graphic art effects from almost any image source.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 24 Ratings

very informative - 2009-07-07
Reviewer Rating:
a lot of great ideas-I am a teacher and the step by step is very helpful and gives lots of fun ideas

excellent getting started book - 2009-02-09
Reviewer Rating:
i agree with a couple of the reviews here about the settings used in the examples. 41% opacity? will it explode if i make it 42? however, the book is aptly called a cookbook, because like all recipes (except for baking), they are meant for experimenting with once you get the basics.

we rarely question a recipe that says 1/4 teaspoon of tumeric. what happens if i bump it up to 1/2? but i know what happens from experience when I accidentally put 1 tablespoon of cayenne in instead of 1 teaspoon!

From this perspective, these books are awesome - cutting straight to the chase more than a dummies guide. just play with the settings in each step - save different versions of the files as you go along - and then test print the different results. we did this with black and white photo developing, why not with photoshop?

Lots of tips and tricks. - 2008-09-30
Reviewer Rating:
This book is very visual, and it's very simple to follow the step-by-step instructions in this book. Highly recommended, if you want to take your photoshop skills to the next level.

Complete Photoshop CS3 for Digital Photographers (Graphics Series) by Colin Smith - 2008-06-08
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book however; I do miss the step by step instructions to create an photo. CS3 do is a heavy professional program and do have very much possibilities. A beginner does not know all the tools and gadgets what are build inn. The most simply case like: how to cut that part from your picture to create a better look a like photo is one of these delays. Not everybody does know how to use specific tools. This is a missing point for a really good written book.

Quick and to the point - 2008-04-05
Reviewer Rating:
This book is great if you aren't looking for too much explanation into what you are doing. I began to read this book at my local super book store, and wrote down the information. I like this book because it gives me the information I want to do what I need to, without all the fluff and stuff of other books.

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