Product Description

Just when you think you’ve learned all that you could ever know about working in Photoshop, digital artist and photomontage king Steve Caplin comes along with yet another masterful method for creating incredible works of art in Photoshop. This time, he’ll show you how to create complete images, from start to finish, entirely within the software program. No source material, photographs, or existing files from other software packages are needed, saving you valuable time and resources. The techniques you’ll learn in this ground-breaking new book will help you combine your artistic vision and skills with an understanding of how to manipulate the built-in Photoshop filters to produce impressive, eye-catching artwork.

Each chapter opens with a complete double page illustration, created entirely in Photoshop. Then, carefully laid out step-by-step instructions show you how each element in the illustration is created, and how they are all combined in the end to make a convincing final image. Using Steve’s proven methods for success, you’ll be able to produce images that reflect a more finely crafted, hand drawn approach, whether you’re an artist for your own enjoyment or a working professional looking for a leg up on the competition.

*The only book of its kind that does not rely on any external images whatsoever–each and every element is created directly in Photoshop
*A chapter covering the basics of using specific filters and textures and a chapter providing a summary of common techniques and tools will help you brush up on your general Photoshop skills so you can move through the rest of the book successfully
*Be sure to visit Steve’s website at www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com for even more Photoshop tips, tricks and advice

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Amazon Exclusive: An Essay from Steve Caplin, Author of 100% Photoshop

Working in Photoshop is just about the most fun you can have without breaking the law. Its power and elegance means that we’re limited only by our imaginations: we can combine images to make a political point, to show off a product, or simply to create a beautiful piece of artwork. These days, it’s easier than ever to find the images we need. The internet is awash with royalty-free image libraries, often selling images at very low cost–or giving them away for free. We may turn to Wikimedia, the resource center of Wikipedia, to find a specific shot; we might choose the cut rate photographs at iStockphoto.com; or we might pick one of the thousands of free images available from sites such as www.morguefile.com, or the stock exchange at sxc.hu, or the myriad free surfaces at www.mayang.com/textures. But even with the vast range of images readily available to us, we sometimes find that the perfect shot of the ideal object simply doesn’t exist. Sometimes we have the physical object at hand so we can photograph it; often we don’t. In these cases, the only real option is to draw it ourselves. There are several reasons we might choose to draw an object, or a texture, or a background, directly in Photoshop. For one thing, it means we can get exactly the view we want, without having to trawl through a thousand images. But for me, the main reason to draw directly in Photoshop is for pure, unadulterated fun. Creating a piece of artwork entirely from scratch is hugely enjoyable–and extremely satisfying when we get it to work out the way we saw it in our mind’s eye. 100% Photoshop contains dozens of examples of drawn objects and textures, at a level that just about any Photoshop user could achieve. Along the way, we learn new techniques and approaches, and hone our Photoshop skills. But mainly, drawing in Photoshop gives us a level of satisfaction a mere montage can never hope to equal.

(Photo © Kate Garner)

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Amazon Exclusive: Steve Caplin’s Top Ten Tips for Photoshop 1. Always draw the basic object in a mid-tone gray. Whether you then add highlights and shadows with the Dodge and Burn tools, or adjust the contrast with Curves, or add a metallic effect with Layer Styles, you only need be concerned about the luminosity: there’s too much opportunity for color images to go haywire. Add the color later, when the basic object has been built. 2. Duplicate, duplicate, duplicate. Make copies of your layers after each successful stage. It can be frustrating to get near the end and find there was a mistake early on in the process–but if you have an earlier version to return to, you can correct your errors far more easily. 3. Name each layer as you create it. If you use a filter, consider naming it with the settings you used – such as “Unsharp Mask, 2, 150, 0″–so you know how the effect was achieved. 4. Always experiment on a copy. Photoshop is ideal for tinkering and trying out new ideas–but make sure you keep a copy of the original before you start down an unknown path. 5. Be creative with filters. The Plastic Wrap filter doesn’t just wrap objects in plastic, it can be used to create liquids of all sorts. The Clouds filter may produce lousy clouds, but it’s a great random texture generator. And give the Wave filter another chance, it’s better than it looks. 6. Don’t erase anything. Use a Layer Mask instead. That way, you can always reveal pat of a layer you’d previously hidden. Once it’s erased, it’s gone. 7. Rather than applying a Curves or Color Balance adjustment to a layer, use an Adjustment Layer instead. The effect will be the same, except that we can go back and change the adjustment at any time–or copy it to a new layer. 8. Learn to use the Pen tool. It’s the single scariest Photoshop tool, and many users just give up on it. Take a day to master it and you’ll value it for the rest of your life. 9. Don’t forget the shadows. Shadows on objects, shadows beneath objects, shadows on the wall behind objects. Once the composition is finished, it’s the shadows that really bring it to life. 10. Convert layers to Smart Objects in complex compositions. Each time an object is scaled, rotated or distorted, some quality is lost. With Smart Objects, we can tinker as much as we like without losing any quality. It can be heartbreaking to see an image looking soft or ragged, simply because we changed our minds one time too many.

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A Look Inside 100% Photoshop
Click to Enlarge
The images below are all drawn entirely in Photoshop, using no photographs.

The box uses a variety of textures and shading techniques.	The record is a surprisingly easy object to create: the shine makes this one zing, in just a couple of steps.	The watch seems to be a complex object, but in fact it’s straightforward enough for anyone to draw.

The iPod is a straightforward object to draw; the shine on the screen brings it to life.	The only part that takes time when drawing the ruler is the tick marks.	The racquet is a complex object, bending the wood texture around the top and interlacing the strings.

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100% Photoshop: Create stunning illustrations without using any photographs