| A Creative COW Book Review | 
 | Jim Harvey
JHV Digital
New York, USA
©Copyright 2005 Jim Harvey and Creativecow.net. All Rights Reserved | Article Focus:
In this article, CreativeCOW.net contributing editor Jim Harvey reviews Photoshop CS2 Gone Wild by Sherry London, by Wiley Publishing; Bk&CD-Rom edition (November 7, 2005), 400 pages, ISBN: 0764598139, and reveals, ''The book is laid out nicely, and it's certainly well written. There are top quality photographs and illustrations throughout the book that make the instructions as clear as possible. From a production value standpoint the book is a 10''. Jim does have some reservations, though, so read on to see his complete picture of the book!
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There is a new company on the scene that is publishing some new Photoshop tutorial books. It's always good to have more outlets for information. We welcome WILEY to the party. Hopefully, they will provide some fresh new ideas and techniques for all the hungry Photoshop users out there.
Sherry London's book is a bit of an odd mix for me. Nearly 375 pages of nothing but step-by-step tutorials fill this full size book (I'm not complaining!). There is a companion disk with the book that contains necessary files and additional data that goes with the lessons in the book.
The book is laid out nicely, and it's certainly well written. There are top quality photographs and illustrations throughout the book that make the instructions as clear as possible. From a production value standpoint the book is a 10.
I do have some discomfort with this book, however:
Looking at the book, I would have been very happy if the author would have devoted a chapter to how she created the Chapter Front pages! I think some of the nicest work in the book was the open leaf on each chapter. Nowhere did we learn how to construct them. Pity!
The book seemed to have a kind of retro feel to it. With the amazing things that are possible with Photoshop, even early versions of the program, the content in this book seemed to be rather simplified. Lots of patterns and some basic metallics, but I kept feeling that the really good stuff was somehow being held back. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good and useful techniques here. I just found that you really had to scour the book to find them. To be totally fair, I'm not a big pattern person. Nor do I do a lot of morphing people into animals or creating new species from combinations of creatures. I prefer to use Photoshop to create more realistic compositions and to create photo-realistic 3D compositions. The pattern work in this book runs the gamut from ho hum to very slick. I kept thinking of magazine and print advertising while looking over the tutorials. Let's put it this way, you could do worse than learning from this book. I just didn't find it to be Photoshop “gone wild”. Maybe I'm just too much of an extremist!
One request from me to the entire Photoshop publishing world;
Please do not ever do another tutorial on the liquefy feature. If I see one more grotesque head manipulation, I will scream loud like a girl. Taking beautiful women and handsome men and turning them into grotesques is tiresome, passé, boring and completely 20 minutes ago. Besides, Pete Millar did it better 40 years ago. Surely there has to be a better use for this tool?
©Copyright 2005 Jim Harvey | Creative Cow
All Rights Reserved
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