Creative Photoshop by Derek Lea

I knew I was going to love this book when I read this line in the introduction: “Why does the world need another Photoshop book?” You don’t have to read the author’s answer to understand why the world needs this Photoshop book; a quick look at the imagery shows you that the title Creative Photoshop is no joke.

Derek Lea’s instructional book eschews the usual “this is a layer, this is the toolbox” talk and instead focuses on artistry, and by artistry, I don’t mean tips on gradient fills and drop shadows. We’re talking rich, complex illustrations that rival those found in the Communication Arts Illustration Annual. Check out the author’s portfolio to see what I mean.

My fear when it comes to books touting the creative or artistic aspects of a digital application is that you’ll learn just one style that doesn’t translate well to most of your design or illustration needs. There’s no fear here, though. Each chapter tackles a different illustration style, including some that you wouldn’t expect to fit perfectly with Photoshop – retro art, “urban lowbrow,” antique effects, to name a few.

Though Creative Photoshop is meant for more experienced users, it doesn’t leave beginners high and dry. Thare a few early chapters that introduce new users to the basics of drawing and painting with Photoshop tools. More advanced users can learn a lot about using a graphics tablet with Photoshop and will get some tips on shape layers and tracing techniques in this section as well. Even in the early chapters, the focus is extremely high-quality artwork with special attention given to realism (the Creating Stencil Art chapter), and attractive styling (the Tracing Photographs chapter). My favorite by far is the chapter on Retro Art Effects. A great mix of techniques is used here, including halftones, offsets, alpha masks, texture channels, and more, to create stunning results that you’d never expect to see in Photoshop.

At this point, the quality of work is so good that it’s almost detrimental. You may find yourself wondering if it’s really possible for you, assuming you’re not a fine artist or excellent photographer, to create this quality of work in the absence of the enclosed CD-ROM. If you have trouble here, you may want to enlist the help of an artist friend who has some great pencil or ink sketches. The chapters on creating digital art from sketches and coloring comic art will help you build your creative Photoshop skills, even if you’re not so handy with a pencil.

Speaking of paper, you’re bound to have a lot of fun with the Unconventional Methods section of the book. It’s home to chapters that employ fax machines, hair dryers, and photocopiers to create surprisingly beautiful antique and collage effects.

The next major section of the book gets back to Photoshop’s roots: photo manipulation. The chapters listed under Illustrative Photography focus on the incredible things you can do with portraits: building them into surreal sculptures, taking them into the 3D world Escher-style, and even aging them quite realistically. For designers, rather than digital artists, this photography section can be one of the most useful, as the techniques learned here can easily translate into more traditional portrait retouching jobs.

That’s something to consider as you work throughout the book. The techniques are extremely easy to use, even if they appear very complex, and can be applied to many traditional design jobs you may have. If those design jobs involve Illustrator or 3D applications, you’ll get even more out of the final section which focuses on combining Photoshop with other apps for even greater versatility. I expected to see something on Corel Painter here, but that was perhaps too big a subject to approach in this book.

There’s no question that this book is incredibly inspiring, and the art you can create following along is nothing short of breathtaking. However, Creative Photoshop does pose a challenge: How can you envision new digital art projects using the styles and techniques you’ve learned? I would have loved some tips at the end of each chapter to help kick start the flow of ideas, but realistically, this creativity needs to come from the reader alone. It’s no small task, but with the techniques mastered, your focus can be on the concepts.