Photoshop Filter Effects Encyclopedia: The Hands-On Desktop Reference for Digital Photographers

By Roger Pring and Ilex Press Ltd

Book Overview

Adobe Photoshop has become the tool of choice for professional photographers, designers, and amateur enthusiasts. But it's a complex application with many features-and scant information on how to use them to best advantage. A case in point: there are 100 built-in filters in Photoshop, designed to enable the user to easily make subtle or dramatic image adjustments, and there is very little online help available with the application, and no printed manual. Users can spend hours trying to use filters effectively-an inefficient and often frustrating way to work. In Photoshop Filter Effects Encyclopedia , author and educator Roger Pring explains and decodes the settings of every filter that Photoshop CS2 has to offer, from Artistic filters such as Colored Pencil, Cutout, and Watercolor to Stylize filters like Bevel, Emboss, and Extrude. And, unlike many reference books that give you a lot of information you'll never need, it is filled with easy-to-follow, step-by-step, practical recipes for creating truly amazing effects, such as: Creating selective focus Simulating motion blur Adding special lens and filter effects Working with tone and color Creating dramatic solarized and posterized images Working with artificial lighting Simulating textures Creating multi-layered images and photomontages Reproducing graphic arts effects and much more. The best part is that you don't have to be a Photoshop expert to create sophisticated, professional-looking results-the recipes take the guesswork out of the process, so you can work quickly and efficiently. Packed with hundreds of full-color photographs, clearly written instructions, and practical tips, this book is the ultimate, no-nonsense Photoshop CS2 Filters reference for creative photographers, designers, and artists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596100213
• ISBN13: 9780596100216
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 9.4" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

A Must Have For Every Photoshop User

For anyone who uses Photoshop in graphic design and or to correct or edit their precious photos, this book is a must have in your library of reference materials. It takes the mystery out of all those scary, misused, underused and never used filters in Photoshop by clearly showing and explaining how to use them and when to use them. This is one fantastic book.

Great Photoshop Filters Reference

Of all the things that Photoshop can do, the Filters option certainly is one of the coolest options available to users. Taking a digital picture or just a standard graphics file, you can use the power of Photoshop Filters to create unique art for whatever purpose you want. From a colored pencil effect to blurring images to one of the newest filters "Vanishing Point", this book is an absolute gem. If you use Filters on a daily basis and want to see what can be done to take a normal image and make it stand out from the "blah" that is out there in the world, this book is for you. If you are a heavy Photoshop user but want to go beyond the basics of just resizing images and cropping pictures, you will also heavily enjoy this book. Of the 4 books in this Photoshop line I love each one of them and feel that all readers should rush out and pick them all up for their reference. The only downside of this book really isn't a fair one at all, and that's that I wish there were more pages and examples dedicated to all of the filters covered here. Obviously this isn't a realistic gripe so it's barely even worth mentioning. ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Great filter reference

Each filter is described in a page or two and has a very simple introduction and a great "How it works" section with full color examples. Most filter descriptions also include "why you might use this" information which is equally useful. Whether thumbing through for ideas or learning the specifics of a filter, this book educates the reader. It's a no-nonsense, straight-forward reference book. I have no complaints, it is a great reference guide of the Photoshop CS2 filters.

A great Photoshop resource

As soon as I saw that O'Reilly was going to be publishing this encyclopedia of filter effects, I placed my pre-order for it. When it arrived I was not disappointed. This book explains how each filter in Photoshop works as well as having plenty of photos to illustrate them. The same picture is used for each group of filters so it is easy to compare and contrast the differences in filters. Beside showing what every filter does, tho book also demonstrates how the settings in the filters will affect the final result. This is a great reference that explains the filters in Photoshop better and more comprehensively than any other Photoshop book I own while still being very easy to use and understand. O'Reilly also has a similar book for Photoshop blending modes that I'm now planning on buying after seeing this book.

Great reference book on Photoshop Filters

Until this book was published, I still used my old 1999 copy of "Photoshop in a Nutshell" as the definitive guide to Photoshop filters. However, this book surpasses that one in its coverage and its no-nonsense approach to each filter. The book has a chapter for each class of filter: Artistic, Blur, Brush Strokes, Distort, etc. Depending on the complexity of each filter there are two to four pages describing each filter in detail, its controls, and how to use each filter to improve a photograph or achieve a particular effect. Some effects require combinations of filters, and this is covered in detail too. There are plenty of colorful photographs demonstrating the effects that are possible with each filter. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a complete reference on all of Photoshop's filters and not just the coverage of the most popular subset of filters that most books have.