Solstice Retouch wrote:
I still have yet to find a great one dedicated strictly to retouching. But most recommend skin:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ … futura-20/

I study art more than I do retouching, I just find that more useful after knowing most of the tools in P.S.

I've actually read that one already, and I agree, it's good one.

S T Pro Retouching wrote:
Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Dan Moughamian

And Scott Valentine.   (Gotta plug a fellow co-moderator, even if it's on another site.)

S T Pro Retouching wrote:
Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin

Good point; often excellent guides to "Photoshop" aren't books on Photoshop. I learned a lot of what I know about using Photoshop via airbrush books and magazines.

Seriously, though: understanding the tools is often the easy part. Knowing how to use those tools effectively often requires knowledge far afield from 'Photoshop' itself, whether that's color theory (for color correction and optimization), art (retouching, compositing), lighting (retouching, compositing), anatomy (retouching), etc.

Kevin_Connery wrote:
My list of recommended Photoshop books for photographers is here. It's different than the ones I'd recommend to a graphic artist, but these make a much better foundation for photo-imaging than most general books on Photoshop.

The linked page has reviews. Here are just the titles and authors.

General Photography
Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers by Martin Evening
The Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby
Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies by Lee Varis
Adobe Photoshop CS2: The Art of Photographing Women by Kevin Ames

Retouching
Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann & Wayne Palmer
Glitterguru on Photoshop: From Concept to Cool by Suzette Troche-Stapp
Commercial Photoshop Retouching: In the Studio by Glenn Honiball
Digital Retouching for Fashion, Beauty, and Portrait Photography in Photoshop CS3 by Gry Garness


Specialty
Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction by Dan Margulis
Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace by Dan Margulis
Photoshop Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann
Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Bruce Fraser & Jeff Schewe
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop CS2 by Bruce Fraser
Real World Color Management by Bruce Fraser, Fred Bunting, Chris Murphy
Photoshop Channel CHOPS by David Biedny, Bert Monroy, Nathan Moody
Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature by Matt Kloskowski

(Note that most titles with CS4 have CS3, CS2, or earlier versions, often heavily discounted.)


I love you. Seriously.

Kevin_Connery wrote:

S T Pro Retouching wrote:
Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Dan Moughamian

And Scott Valentine.   (Gotta plug a fellow co-moderator, even if it's on another site.)

S T Pro Retouching wrote:
Making Faces by Kevyn Aucoin

Good point; often excellent guides to "Photoshop" aren't books on Photoshop. I learned a lot of what I know about using Photoshop via airbrush books and magazines.

Seriously, though: understanding the tools is often the easy part. Knowing how to use those tools effectively often requires knowledge far afield from 'Photoshop' itself, whether that's color theory (for color correction and optimization), art (retouching, compositing), lighting (retouching, compositing), anatomy (retouching), etc.

(end quote from kevin) dunno why but the tag isnt working correctly.
---
Hehe yeah it's amazing what you can learn from seemingly unconventional sources. My apologies for not listing co-authors. As a photographer and a graphic designer it's amazing what I learned from painters and the like. When I started digital photography and I got into digital retouching I learned a great deal (from the suggestions of christy) from make up books.
- Phen

Liz Caldwell Photo wrote:
Google.  I learned everything I know on a case by case basis, by searching Google.  I'd stop and think "I wonder if I could _____ on photoshop...? I bet there's a tutorial on Google somewhere." 


...and there always was.

For small values of "always"

In other words: it wasn't always true, as Photoshop predates the Web, which in turn predates Google. Some of us are dinosaurs.

Personally, I don't learn as well from videos as from books. Videos always seemed to be going the wrong speed--too slow (and my mind wanders) or too fast (and I have to rewind to keep up). That appears to be the minority preference, though.

Still, there is another benefit to books rather than just standalone tutorials: foundation building. It's hard to put together advanced instruction if you don't know what basics the audience knows and doesn't know. (Not to mention the vetting process before a book gets published. While 'bad' books do make in onto the shelf, they still got approved by someone willing to commit their own money to the project. Web tutorials don't have that review built in, and there's a larger fraction of poor/bad/dangerously bad tutorials out there.

(There are some tremendous tutorials online, both free and fee. It's just that there are even more which aren't.)

Robert Randall wrote:
Most of the books available that touch on the subject of Photoshop are simply retreads of a Scott Kelby book. Probably the only original material available was written by either Katrin Eisemen, Martin Evening, Dan Margulis, or those two guys that wrote Channel Chops, and even they admit they got most of their information from Dan Margulis.

While the program is all powerful, its actually quite simple to use once you get the jist of the basics, and you can do that by reading any of the authors I've mentioned.

The one book that doesn't get as much credit as it deserves, is the Classroom In A Book, from Adobe. Read that, and you'll never need to pick up another Kelby book as long as you live, and think of all the trees you'll save by not buying one of those door stops.

Probably the most completely worthless piece of crap ever written on the subject is "Welcome To Oz", by Vincent Versace. His work flow is pure stupidity, and he is so bad at color its laughable. If I ever gave a client an end result as horrible as what he published, I would have my ass handed to me on a rusty garbage can lid.

why must the lid be rusty?

LADY SWEET FACE wrote:

why must the lid be rusty?

Simply to illustrate what a worthless piece of crap that book is. It doesn't deserve silver!

Robert Randall wrote:
Probably the most completely worthless piece of crap ever written on the subject is "Welcome To Oz", by Vincent Versace. His work flow is pure stupidity, and he is so bad at color its laughable. If I ever gave a client an end result as horrible as what he published, I would have my ass handed to me on a rusty garbage can lid.

I was very impressed with some of his results, and his insistence on visualizing what you want before starting, but I didn't like his processes at all. He seems to get his good results in spite of how he works--his strongest examples don't seem to use the techniques he espouses.

OTOH, there's another (non-photography-oriented) Photoshop book with horrible examples that actually gives excellent advice on a lot of techniques. It's from an illustrator who often works on very short deadlines, and he cuts too too many corners in terms of the results in terms of photo-realistic results, which is arguably the goal. Someone who wasn't sloppy could use the techniques as explained and get pretty darn good results--but anyone who used the resulting images in the book as a guide would stop long before that point.

I can't recommend either, even though there are some things worth listening to in both, as the 'bad' points swamp the 'good' ones.

Kevin_Connery wrote:
I can't recommend either, even though there are some things worth listening to in both, as the 'bad' points swamp the 'good' ones.

You know, but you have to let the reader decide what it's worth. It's the same as going though a class with a poor teacher, or taking advice from here online.

I do like Skin, although I do suggest people throw out half the shit in that book. But to someone starting it could be a great resource.

I still am picking though this book, which after a while should improve what I'm doing by a lot - http://www.valorebooks.com/Search/ISBN/9780471403999

Classroom in a book was decent, and it'd be fun to go though some of them again, even the old ones.



I should find this again, and they were over my head at the time, but the "photoshop wow" books or whatever seemed to be good. Even the old ones are great since really, none of this stuff has changed all that much in the past 5-6 years, or at least hte basics haven't changed.

Andrew Thomas Designs wrote:

Kevin_Connery wrote:
I can't recommend either, even though there are some things worth listening to in both, as the 'bad' points swamp the 'good' ones.

You know, but you have to let the reader decide what it's worth. It's the same as going though a class with a poor teacher, or taking advice from here online.

That's why I deliberately didn't list the name of the other book. I don't recommend against it; I simply don't recommend it.

In a discussion, if things like that come up, I'm more than happy to elaborate on trade-offs, but most forum threads (and most people) seem to want quick yes-or-no choices, and I generally just leave out the ones which have serious drawbacks when making recommendations rather than write a long essay about the details.