Digital Painting in Photoshop

Magnificent!! This is one of the very few professionally done how-to books.It is extremely thorough and detailed. I don't understand the bad reviewsat all. The format is excellent. The book, though, is for those that are seriousabout Photoshop and really want to spend the time using it.

Modern day techniques are far in advance of this book - very good but perhaps 10 years behind where we are now!

Disclaimer: I am not an artist nor a Photoshop professional. I rarely use Photoshop for anything except editing photos or making simple graphics for work.So here's my penny worth. Digital Painting in Photoshop is a short, practical introduction to the endless possibilities of digital photo editing in Photoshop. You can take a boring photo and turn it into a work of digital art in 10 minutes or less, with some practice. The author uses example projects to demonstrate different ways to render photos: charcoal, pastel, watercolor, oil, illustration. The book is nicely illustrated with step-by-step screenshots; and the author walks the reader through each project. So, why the 3 stars? In my humble opinion, the book doesn't 100% match its title; the title seem to imply more information than is contained in the book. I would call it "Ten(or insert number)easy digital painting projects in Photoshop". Chapter 1 is a lengthy catalogue of screenshots of brushes, pattern fills, and backgrounds. It's hard to imagine anyone actually looking at these screenshots, page after page, before opening them in Photoshop, unless there will be a quiz. Thus, Chapter 1 led me to believe that the book is for people who don't know much about Photoshop: like myself, except for the brushes. Expecting detailed instructions, I was somewhat disappointed when no explanation was given as to what each action accomplishes in the process. Without knowing what each layer does it is very difficult to catch silly mistakes: for example when a mask thumbnail wasn't active on my screen, or default foreground color was wrong for the mask, I couldn't 'paint' and didn't know what I am doing wrong. It took some time to figure out. So if you are like me, beginning to learn Photoshop, this book may not be the best for you. Overall, the book is a fun way to explore Photoshop, especially if you know your way around a little bit.

Very readable and doable lessons. I normally have to have someone show me how things are to be done, rather than read how to do them, but this book overcomes that obstacle for me.

If you're expecting a book that will help you learn to paint in photoshop (as the title suggests) this isn't it. It's just glorified photomanipulation, to make photos look like paintings. It's good for what it is, but I feel mislead and highly disappointed.