Have you ever wondered how those tablois photos of amazingly realistic UFOs and other paranormal phenomena are created? This text reveals the mystery behind these photos, and provides practical tips and techniques that let you create your own homespun images with fanciful themes. Written for amateurs wanting to experiment, hobbyists looking to create unique projects, and professionals searching for techniques to adapt and apply to their work, this book provides real world photography techniques with a twist. Using scanning and digital photography technology, you’ll learn how to use "Photoshop 7" to create fantasy photos with special effects (fire, explosions, wind, and so on), the appearance of age (wrinkles, yellowing), and special blurring and lighting illustions to add realism to your creations. The book also teaches how to create a variety of characters from photos of friends and family, including ghosts, fairies and safari hunters. And for those old photos that you really cherish, the book provides practical methods for restoring any that may have aged or been damaged.

Digital art is often thought to be as easy as a few button clicks on the computer but in reality, digital artists need to have just as much artistic talent as traditional artists. To truly master the digital realm, you need to master your software (in this case Photoshop CS), and be fluent in the "digital language" it provides. This allows you to intuitively apply the artistic principles and techniques needed to create dynamic images. The goal of this book is to teach you how to blend technical skill with artistic talent through the creation of a variety of interesting and fun images.

If you’re already using Photoshop CS, you can jump right in and get started. If you think you could use a quick refresher, there is a brief overview of Photoshop essentials you’ll need to know to be successful with this book. With the ideas covered here, you’ll learn how and why Photoshop does what it does, and gain an intuitive understanding that will help you progress to the next level of digital creativity. In the process, you’ll apply what you learn by creating and working through a wide range of fun, practical tutorials, and learn the skills needed to create your own digital masterpieces!

What You’ll Learn To Do * Create digital masterpieces from your own photographs * Make fantasy images as if photographed in the real world * Morph human and animal faces * Create undersea landscapes from photography * Use Photoshop’s brush engine to create smoke, rust, and concrete * Make ringed planets and solar systems from scratch * Use Photoshop and 3rd party filters (Nik Color Efex Pro 2.0 and Sharpener Pro) to recreate realism * Integrate a CGI generated image into photographs * Composite photographic images seamlessly to appear as one complete scene * Create effects in images such as explosions, fire, and fog * Make a custom moon to include in a landscape * Create a starship dog fight complete with laser blasters * Includes a companion CD-ROM w/ the files needed to do the tutorials, all the book images, demos of Photoshop CS (PC), Nik Color Efex Pro, and Sharpener Pro (PC & Mac)

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS For both systems you will need Photoshop CS. The trial version will let you work through the projects, but it has limitations that prevent you from completing the projects or saving your work. WIN: Intel® Pentium® III or 4 processor, Microsoft® Windows® 2000 with Service Pack 3 or Windows XP (Adobe applications on Windows XP with Service Pack 2), 192MB RAM (256MB recommended), 280MB of available hard-disk space, Color monitor with 16-bit color or greater video card, 1024x768 or greater monitor resolution, CD-ROM drive, Internet connection for product activation. MAC: PowerPC® G3, G4, or G5 processor, OS X v.10.2.4 to v.10.3 w/ Java Runtime Environment 1.4, 192MB RAM (256MB recommended) 320MB of available hard-disk space, Color monitor with 16- bit color or greater video card, 1024x768 or greater monitor resolution, CD-ROM drive.

Photoshop CS Trickery & FX (Graphics Series) by Stephen Burns
A well designed book, not for the beginner but straight forward enough to clearly understand the process. The design of the book stimulates and enhances the creative juices with enough information to help you to move on to newer and bigger things. I would certainly recommend this book.

Very advanced
I know photoshop fairly well (intermediate) and I find this book very advanced. The instructions are also difficult to follow, and what I got onscreen didn’t follow what they got. You have to already have some understanding of masks and channels to begin with to grasp the concepts, and even then I found it hard. I would only buy this book if you want to learn advanced techniques that the average person will never use or remember.

Excellent Book
If your into Photoshop and are at the intermediate level or more, this book can help a lot. It is full of interesting techniques. I’m very glad I purchased it.

Great Content Lousy Book Binding
I found this book amazing, it teaches you some tricks and special effects you won’t find anywhere else. Definitely for a more advanced user, however if you are knowledgeable about the basics you will learn a lot. My only complaint is within 3 days of use the book fell apart. I now have 3 sections that tore off from the book that I need to refer to. Perhaps it was just my luck to get one with a binding whose glue was missing; whatever for such a great book its sad it is in pieces on my bookshelf.


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Excellent!
This was one of the rare books that really explain how to make art with Photoshop! I love that the images he uses are hi res on the CD that comes with the book!
Debbi

The How and Why of Photoshop
This book is without a doubt the best. It actually teaches you why and how Photoshop works. Rather than tell you what to do to acheive an effect, it explaines why you go through the steps to get the result you want. This way you actually learn how to manipulate Photoshop on your own. It speaks to you on a level that almost anyone can learn and comprehend. I went through this book and CD as if it were a text book and learned more than I have from any other source. If you want to learn how to use Photoshop, then this is the course I recomend.

Great book, just what we needed!
Stephen Burns has been teaching Photoshop for years and has great credentials in the industry. When I saw he had a book out on Photoshop in the areas I was looking to get information on... this book became a no brainier. As I thought it would this book was exactly what I needed and went way beyond. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their knowledge of Photoshop or looking to provide their customers with more professional looking digital work.

Computer Imagery as Art
Computer Bks - Desktop Publishing, Computer Books: General, Photoshop has usually been viewed as a way to do fairly mundane tasks: cleaning up a picture to change the background perhaps, or adding a highlight, and of course there’s the long established practice of putting someone else’s head on a different body.

This book goes far beyond that with the view that the computer screen is your bare canvas and suitable for building any kind of image that you can visualize. In many cases the author starts with a standard picture but then modifies it into something entirely different, perhaps just using Photoshop effects, perhaps combining other images into the first. An example is converting the image of a model into that of a cat like being. In other cases he starts with a blank screen and creates the entire image, in one case a spiral galaxy.

In the past photography had to fight a battle to be viewed as an art form. Now that battle is being fought with computer generated imagery. This book is a cannon shot into understanding computer generated art.