Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists

Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists is an in-depth guide to creating visual effects art using Photoshop. Taking a straightforward, visual approach to Adobe's best-selling software, this book provides you with everything you need to use Photoshop to meet specific goals for art creation. Develop the skills you need to master professional matte painting and 2D and 3D texturing techniques and secrets. This unique guide is one of the only books available targeted specifically to the VFX artist. Written by a professional Texture Artist at a major Hollywood visual effects studio, you?ll learn insider tips and tricks that are hard to come by. Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artists adheres to the high standards of the professional VFX world, while still offering an abundance of information for the VFX hobbyist.

User review
Worth Checking Out.
This is by far a very informative in-depth guide to advance on the subject of or brush up on Photoshop and VFX skills even for the amateur `that's me` and there's an ample amount of books out there to choose from. I would say that this is worth checking out.

User review
Starting to show its age
As of the copy I bought this book is no longer really up to date with the latest techniques and the latest version of PS - CS2.
As a senior Vfx artists there was some stuff of interest but it would be much better for a student than a practicing VFX artist.

It is not a waste of time but it would be nice to see more on newer things like Smart objects, HDR, layer groups and alike. It would be worth checking out if there is a new edition.

User review
good, and useful
You will make nothing cool in this book as far as examples, tutorials go, but what it will do is concentrate on solid methods you can use to get the most out of photoshop. Most content is geared toward small tweaks, processes you can use to add quality to your work. For example, most people use the unsharp mask or sharpen tools to crispen images, in addition to this, she will show you some lesser-known features such as high-pass, which may give better sharpening results in many situations. This whole book is based on stuff like that. So if you are interested in exploring lesser-known ways of going about things, then you should get it. My guess is that intermediate artists would benefit the most from this. Even beginners will get something out of it. All in all this is a good title.

User review
the first and only Photoshop book for vfx artists
there are hundreds of books on Photoshop but none that have been made specifically for VFX Artists. Except this one.
VFX Artists means those that create the materials and do the mapping for 3D objects as well as Matte Painters.
Although targeted for the intermediate to advanced user you don't have to know much about photoshop to read this book. Lopsie invests the first 92 pages to explain all the basics and make sure that everybody will be able to follow the following chapters.

Part two is all about textures. She introduces her own version of a UV-testing checkerboard which is (as her example clearly shows) better suited for checking the correct alignment of all UVs than the standard black-and-white checkerboard often used for mapping-tests.
She also explains how to create your own tileable textures from any photo, even when the tiles on the photo have been shot in a non-orthographic angle.
She shows how to create custum brushes for dirt maps, create actions and lots more.

Part three is about matte paintings. Having read that Lopsie Schwartz has been doing work for `Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers`, `Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone`, and `Hollow Man` i thought that this chapter would be filled with inspiring examples of fantastic matte paintings, fantasy landscapes and so on. Well, it's not. But that's okay. If i just wanted inspiration and examples i could have ordered `the invisible art` by by Mark Cotta Vaz and Craig Barron. What she does instead might be less stunning but more valuable: she shows how to handle common tasks and problems. Such as removing unwanted elements in a photo, how to sharpen images using the highpass filter, reduce the noise, extract portions of an image, change the color of objects and scenes, merge two photos into one, change a daylight scene into a night scene (pictures on the front cover show before and after) and the list goes on ,,.

Lopsie Schwartz has a very nice way of writing and explaining things. She also has humour. Reading the book is a joy.

The book is all in color. Pictures for the exercises can be downloaded from the publisher's website.

Summary:
Adobe Photoshop for VFX Artist is a great book and covers a topic that has been left out so far, even though there are already so many books on Photoshop. It might not cover everything you need to know but i believe it's the best way for you to get started.