By Jed Clampett

June 1, 2001

This is a profusely illustrated book, with each technique is broken down into bite size pieces. Anyone who is at least a tad bit familiar with Photoshop can perform these tricks with ease. Check out the picture below of a sample of the page layout.


                         

You won't find boring discussions of the tool bar, channels, or why things do what they do here. All you'll find is the FUN stuff! I mean it, it's got all the cool effects you've wondered, "How did they do that?" in here. It's jam packed with great tricks. 

All the funk without the junk

I remember when I first started out in Photoshop I purchased one of the special effects books and the only thing I got out of it was frustration. They assumed I knew how to work with layers and channels and all the tools. With this book, if you can open a new file you'll be able to do the neat tricks it teaches. Now don't misinterpret that statement to mean it's only for beginners. Far from it, users of all skill levels will find cool tricks to improve their workflow and skills.

Jump in anywhere book

There is extensive coverage of working with all kinds of shadows even ways to design for a printing budget. Of course you'll find text effects (a cool light burst) and photographic effects as well.

This next statement best sums up what kind of a book this is:

This book isn't one to read in bed. This is one to read while you're sitting in front of your computer. If you read it anywhere else, after just a few pages, you're going to jump up, boot your computer and start trying some of these effects, so you may as well save yourself the time and sit in front of your computer right from the start.

If you have the previous version of this book you are probably wondering what the differences are. Not many. The color is much better and it is now being published by New Riders. There are the same amount of pages but a few extra tutorials. Where there were several blank pages before the next chapter in the last version, there is now an extra tutorial. The entire book has been updated to Photoshop 6. Mostly the same projects but with updated instructions.

Copyright 2001, Jed Clampett, All Rights Reserved