Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks for Designers First Edition

This book was a quick read, and it follows the clean, concise, visual, to the point pattern set out in other NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) books. There are images to demonstrate practically everything he describes. His instructions are clear, and thankfully lack the ad nauseam detail that bores me to tears. He tells you what he's doing, and shows you, including before and after. That's what I need.While I found the whole book valuable, my two favorite chapters were Chapter 2, the 26 Piece Tool Set, and Chapter 7, A Dream Within a Dream. In Chapter 2 there is a subsection where he takes a plain brown graphic, sort of fleur de lis-ish, and with layer style turns it into a dramatic, metallic, three-dimensional image (without using real 3D techniques for CS5 Extended). It was a very impressive transformation.Chapter 7 is about 3D, which requires  Adobe Photoshop Extended CS5 , and given the fact it is written by Corey Barker, the Photoshop TV (podcast) 3D guy of course it's great. He explains in the book that he also has a video demonstrating the topic on-line; I personally like the print version. I've see him demo 3D numerous times on the podcast, and seeing it is print, where I can internalize at my speed what he is doing is more concrete. I can then refer to it when I'm actually in front of the computer, turning my company logo into a cool 3D image.He also utilizes the define brush command, which granted, I've done, but really rarely use. He refers to it a couple of times in the book, to again create these 3D type effects, (again without using real 3D techniques for CS5 Extended) like lightening, or a blood splat, and I think to myself, "Now how can I work in lightening?" Because it looks so great. From the Photoshop 3D guy, 3D effects without CS5 extended.

If you ever watched Photoshop User TV you know who Corey Barker is. He usually gets labeled as the "3D" guy, but he is way more than that. He's actually the one person I've seen use every nook and cranny of Photoshop to create really cool designs. In this book he has taken his years of experience and teaching for Kelby Media and put it into something that is easy to read and laid out . It's labeled "For Designers", but I think it's for any creative person who wants to make their ideas standout. Ask yourself this:Have you ever seen a cool poster and wished you could do that?Want to market an item but your ideas look flat?Want to portray people in cool and visually striking ways?If you said yes to any of these then buy this book! I'm not sure how many tutorials are in here, but there are a lot. The tutorials aren't 20 pages long to show you one thing either. They are to the point and easy to follow. If you're still not sure, click over to PlanetPhotosop and watch some of Corey's lessons. I think you'll be back after that. Enjoy the book & share your work!

I've been a fan of Corey's website, Planet Photoshop, for years. His video tutorials are some of the best out there. Needless to say, I had very high expectations for this book, and I'm pleased to say that it lived up to all of them. I'm sure if you scour all of his videos online you'll probably find these tricks scattered throughout, but it's great to have a detailed reference like this one to flip through to find exactly what I need. What's also great is how he shows multiple examples of the various techniques, so that you can see many of their different uses and be encouraged to create your own.

Corey covers just about every kind of project you might want to tackle in Photoshop. Along with Matt Kloskowski's book on Compositing Secrets, this book serves up step-by-step Photoshop recipes for compositing Hollywood posters, developing customized brushes--and how to use them--and 3d...it's all in here. If you've ever seen Corey give a presentation, you know how thorough he is, and this book is no exception. Every step, and contingency, is covered in minute detail. Photos are in gorgeous color, and they are given plenty of space so you can really hone in on the details. I would get this book, Matt Kloskowski's Compositing book, as well as one/both of his Layers books, and you will be in Photoshop Nirvana.

Perfectly cool book. I'm a graphic designer and I got a kick out of the cool things that I learned in this book. It seems like you go to school and learn all you can, but you always want to keep looking for books that increase your knowledge on the subject that you love, and this is one. I recommend it for professionals and even people that are interested in Photoshop. It helps if you know some of the ground rules in this application before trying the skill set in this book. Have fun. I felt it worked well with CS4 too, since that is what I have.

Great book to bring your Photoshop skill set up to the next level. Corey shows you how to create useful brushes, explains amazing Photoshop tricks. Want to create a poster? He shows you how to. Want to learn how to edit a pin-up photo? It's in the book along with a ton of other tricks. He shows you how to use these Down and Dirty Tricks and he highly suggest you experiment with them. If you want to have fun and learn new Photoshop tricks this is a must have book . It is loaded with very useful techniques. Another amazing book from one of the Photoshop guys. Thanks Corey.

One of the better technique books on Photoshop. Only gripes (big enough to knock off a star) are no finished project files in the errata and no end picture featured at the start of a lesson so readers can see ahead of time where the lesson is going.

I received this book today from Amazon. Wow! This is what Tutorial books should be like. Every page has at least two screen shots - more often somewhere like four (love it!). I like this format because I can use it as a fast-access collection of recipes, with the-before, the-after, and all the steps in between necessary to get there in a graphical format. I know about Corey Barker from watching his great tutorials on KelbyTraining. These types of books are a great complement to video training.I found that training is key to achieving excellence. This book helps me get there.

as per normal from the writers of most photoshop books, this book shows you some tricks and how to`s but also shows you how things like the fibre filter can transform a pic in a huge way along with ather things that you would proberbly not even think you could do. a welccome addition to the rest of my books. it would be nice if they did not keep using a load of stuff from prevoius books as it mostly seems like im just bying an upgrade book, it has exacly the same pages as the previous book but with only half of the book be ing new

What a great book; easy to follow and the best book I have come across with projects. Unlike other books that miss out "key" information - this book gives great instruction. Corey Barker was great on Layers TV and the book reflects his ability to teach.

ExcellentWhy? Easy to follow examples.Examples that actually are relevant to photographers.This book could have been a bit messy, but thankfully is written in easy to follow bite sized chunks.Can recommend for people to buy with there hard earned cashSteve

Good choice of examples to introduce methods that I found difficult to unravel, though at times I found it difficult to exactly reproduce the process and results using CC. Every project has useful tips and practice.

You have to get this and version two. Brilliant. They don't hold anything back. I have created some brilliant images using the instruction from these books.