Adobe Photoshop Master Class: The Essential Guide to Revisioning Photography - Softcover

Caponigro, John Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0321130103 ISBN 13: 9780321130105

Publisher: Adobe Pr, 2003

Synopsis

Adobe Photoshop Master Class: John Paul Caponigro, 2nd Edition is no ordinary book on Photoshop. It is a true master class by renowned artist and photographer John Paul Caponigro, in which he shares his insights and discoveries as a visual artist. Although the book contains step-by-step tutorials that deconstruct some of Caponigro¿s most inspirational photographic works, the emphasis is on technique and visual problem solving, enabling you to take the concepts and apply them to your own unique projects. Updated for Photoshop 7, the revised edition of this master class includes numerous new and revised chapters that explain how to achieve color accuracy and extend dynamic range, direct attention through focus, control atmospheric perspective, and more. You don¿t have to be a professional photographer to appreciate and learn from this beautiful and informative book¿Caponigro starts out with a section covering Photoshop essentials before moving on to more advanced artistic techniques.

About this title

Review:

The author (the son of Paul Caponigro, a photographer in the tradition of Minor White and Ansel Adams) of Adobe Photoshop Master Class is a skilled art photographer who specializes in intriguing naturescapes that often employ compositing and mirroring. In this book, he shares the photographic wisdom and Photoshop methods that helped create these colorful, mysterious images.

The title is appropriate: the book is modeled after master classes with performance artists; for example, operatic training with Maria Callas. The readers get to see, in detail, Caponigro's techniques and read his philosophies. This demonstration includes Photoshop basics that apply to all types of digital imaging, including calibration, adjustment layers, variations, levels, and curves. It also covers visual principles that are essential to photography in general, like proportion, scale, light, and shadows (including Ansel Adams's Zone system), and--important in the author's own work--reflection and tessellation.

The images, which are generally devoid of the human form, have an otherworldly stillness. Their quiet intensity translates well into book form: the typography and layout resemble a museum catalog, with widely leaded, delicate lines of type. Readers who prefer skimming through how-to books for quick results will be daunted by the level of in-depth attention that this book demands. On the other hand, those who hope to use Photoshop for high-end digital imaging (not just preparing JPEGs for the Web or 600-dpi images for print) will be rewarded by the author's extensive experience and painstaking attention to detail.

Most chapters discuss different issues (e.g., color or shadows) and use Caponigro's images as examples. The discussion is in a narrative form, with quotes and references to artists of all kinds, from Matisse to Goethe. It's like gaining admission to the most competitive graduate seminar, hosted by a renowned artist-in-residence. --Angelynn Grant

Topics covered:

Techniques for using Photoshop (version 5 or higher) on fine digital imaging, including:

• Monitor calibration
• Image resolution
• Applying levels and curves to the Zone system
• Output to print or film

And photographic issues and Photoshop methods used in the author's work, including:

• Photomontage
• Proportion
• Contrast
• Color
• Multiple exposure

About the Author:

John Paul Caponigro's art regularly appears in national and international exhibitions and publications. He writes columns for Photo Techniques, Step-By-Step, and PEI magazines as well as the Apple Computer Web site, and is a contributing editor for View Camera and Camera Arts magazines. He lectures frequently at universities, museums, conferences, and workshops around the world. Caponigro's clients include Adobe, Apple, Canon, Kodak, and Epson.

About this edition

• Publisher: Adobe Pr
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0321130103
• ISBN 13: 9780321130105
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 504