With so many (too many?) Photoshop books on the market, we thought we would look at two recent offerings from two top publishers. The first is the very successful “How to Cheat in Photoshop” book by Steve Caplins, now in its third printing. The second is “Photoshop for Right Brainers” by Al Ward.

Each book takes a different look and a very approach to what are essentially similar topics. As you will see in our reviews, our staff felt one met its goals very successfully, while the other was a great disappointment.

How to Cheat in Photoshop:
The art of creating photorealistic montages
Author: Steve Caplins
Paperback: 376 pages
Publisher: Focal Press
Released: 2005 (3^rd printing)
Language: English
ISBN: 0240519895X
Size: 8.7 x 7.1 x 1.8 inches
Specs: full color, CD
Retail price: $39.95

What a breath of fresh air, and how did we miss the previous editions? This is one of the best books on the subject to come across our desks in a long time. The author has taken a subject that he lives and breaths every day and decanted the most interesting concepts for the book. While we did not see the first edition for comparison, we can tell you that this volume is wonderfully polished and the author has spent a good part of his life refining its information.In the forward to the book, author Steve Caplins explains what he mean by “cheat”. That he is using the term in two ways, to cheat the viewers eye into thinking something is photographic, when it is not. And to cheat/beat the clock by sharing with the reader ways to get their work done faster. Essentially his aim is to enhance the reader’s quality and quantity of work output. A noble goal, but just how well did he succeed?First let us tell you that this was the longest 376 page book we can recall reading. Not that it was boring, no sir. In fact it was just the opposite. The suggestions and tips and techniques were so densely packed into this book that “skimming” was not much of an option. This was compounded by the fact that while many of our staff are 10-15 year Photoshop veterans, the information was all so good we didn’t want to skim past anything.The book is designed to be read in a very visual way, much like a Visual Quick Start book. While there is ample text to support the ideas being conveyed, there are plenty of well illustrated step-by-step images that allow most Photoshop users to read a few captions and grasp the concepts being taught. The balance is uniquely superb and a credit to both the author and its publisher.

“Cheat” is organized into very logical chapter formats. The contents page shows subjects both broad and narrow, that the author kept adding tips to until each was a presentable chapter. The book begins with the obvious subject of “Natural Selection” which covers techniques used to select and isolate items from their unwanted backgrounds. It then moves onto more advanced subjects like “Transformation and Distortion”, “Image Adjustment”, “Composing the Scene”, “Getting into Perspective” and “Light and Shade”.

Later chapters get more specialized with “Heads and Bodies”, “The Third Dimension” and “Hyper Realism”. There are also a number of chapters on creating textural surface treatments, “Shiny Surfaces”, “Metal, Wood and Stone”, and “Paper and Fabric”.

Now that we have deservedly lauded Mr. Caplin for a job well done we feel at ease to take a few nit-picky pot shots. All of these should be taken as afterthoughts and none detract from the value of the book.

The author shares the fact that most his his work is in the newspaper and weekly magazine trade. Obviously one needs to work very swiftly to meet the inhumane deadlines of such an industry, and this is where he has cut his chops. It is also where much of his aesthetics developed, which may or may not jive with what is needed in other industries.

For example, there are a number of references to samples images with photo or “hyper” realistic results. Frequently we did not feel they looked all that realistic. Much of his work looked more photo-illustrative to us, and that he often took great liberty with realism for the sake of humor and visual eye candy appeal. This is fine and it is also a highly marketable style to poses. It just isn’t what we call photo realistic and we felt neither should he.

There were a few statements about industry and absolutes about art we caught throughout that happen to differ from our experiences in the business. As usual, everything should be taken as one persons experience and perspective, which is fine.

Bottom Line: If you use Photoshop, buy this book. At under $40, you would only be “cheating” yourself if you don’t.

Photoshop for Right-Brainers
Author: Al Ward
Paperback: 334 pages
Publisher: Sybex
Released: 2005 Language: English
ISBN: 0782144306 Size: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.9 inches
Specs: full color, CD
Retail price: $49.99

We are truly not sure what to say here. The author has put a good amount of time and thought into this work and we appreciate that. However we are not at all sure who this book is targeting for its market. It is a stylishly assembled four-color volume with very high production value. But its content is all over the map as is the quality of its projects.

For example, chapter one treats the reader like a beginner with topics like “Understanding Layers” and “Understanding Blending Modes” but only gives a half page on each, and then merely 6 pages later it jumps into sharing a technique on “Sharpening Your Image: The high-pass filter trick”.

Why would any reader that does not understand the basics be ready for such an extraordinarily exotic approach to image sharpening just a few pages later? The rest of that chapter is equally confusing editorially. It goes on to show an image extraction tutorial whose final proof-of-technique image is of a moose on its new background, but it is glaringly unimpressive.

Not to beat a dead moose or anything, but the same confused editorial direction continues throughout the book. In one section we have a decent tutorial on cleaning up acne skin and in another a tutorial on enhancing wedding photos. “Fine” we think, this is intended for a serious beginner and mid-range professional.

But then the book keeps going off into strange and often unusable topics. Do you often need to whiten skeleton teeth? How about add zebra stripes to a woman’s face or create a cut off finger on a hand? Add grotesque alien eyes to a child, or perhaps turn a womans lips into a serpent creature? No? We don’t either. If there were some truly valuable techniques provided along the way then perhaps the tutorials would be worth slugging our way through, but there just weren’t. All techniques were quite average.

The rest of the book seems filled with flights of fancy akin to finger painting class. These included tutorials that seemed to involve applying filter after filter and then some more adjustments until we have an image that the author thought could be passed off as creative. Sorry, but if you are out of grade school nobody is putting these images on their refrigerator.

The flow of the tutorials was okay in themselves, however there was not a great deal of thought put into laying it out in any visual step-by-step style. The result is that one must do more reading to understand what is being taught. It is often not worth it.

The author starts most most tutorials with some very personal story, his teenage acne, nights dragging himself home from British pubs, etc. We assume this touchy-feeliness somehow taps into his concept of the right sided brain. While we think we understand what he was trying to do, we think the right side of our brains, and yours, deserve much better.