Where Are the Worthwhile Photoshop Books Anymore?
I was at Barnes & Noble yesterday, and as always, I swung through the photography / Photoshop section, and, as always, I came away unsatisfied. I don’t know if it’s that there are no great photo-artists interested in writing books, or if it’s that the publishers assume the public won’t be interested in anything beyond the trivial and overdone and boring.
One thing is certain: if you already know how to fix red-eye and correct a color cast, there’s nothing there worth reading.
There were two books from some years back that pass nearest what I wish there were more of on the market. One was The Art of Photoshop, by Daniel Giordan, and the other was New Masters of Photoshop, published by Friends of Ed (and good luck getting a copy!).
Even in those two books (and I can dimly recall a couple of others with some passing merit), even in those the work itself was of mixed quality and the instruction overblown in some areas while wholly lacking in others.
What we need is a book written with the serious Photoshop artist in mind, where we can see great art unfold before us, and learn something of the creative process itself.
The nearest work I’ve seen presented on this scale is Vincent Versace’s exemplary Welcome to Oz. I’ve written a set of notes on his techniques, but while I am impressed with his professionalism and creative process, at the end of the day his purpose to create something that looks gorgeous but leaves you wondering if Photoshop even came into it. (It did, in a big way, but his intention is to make you wonder if it was Photoshop or brilliant camera work alone.) Since my interests are more on the side of brazen Photoshop work, his book only partly satisfies.
My hope is that through some of the interviews I conduct for this site, and some of the tutorials I am able to assemble, that I will perhaps be able to create a substitute, here online, for the book that I keep wishing I would find every time I enter the photography aisle at the bookstore.
Note: Photo above used by permission of Phil Steele (grunged to my satisfaction).
