This is a beautiful book and I highly recommend it for any Photoshop user beginner, advanced or anywhere in between. I consider myself pretty advanced in Photoshop and I learned a lot from this book. Just overall a great book and you won't be disappointed.

I was looking for a book to complement a university level digital media class I was taking, and this was it!!! Not only did the beautiful imagery and artful presentation inspire me, but the description and image gallery showed me EXACTLY how to construct these works of art. This is by far my favorite book, and I treasure it as a piece of art!

This book is not only beautiful in presentation and print, but very helpful as well. But do make sure you are familiar with Photoshop before purchasing, as it is geared towards those with some knowledge of the program. Have fun, I am. ;-)

Beautiful digital imagery with great tips and instructions for the intermediate photoshop user. The work is "classy" and doesn't have that cheesy pasted-together, obviously- filtered look that a lot of digital 'art' has. I love this book.

Intended user: Intermediate - Advanced

Although Daniel Giordan has written some of the clearest and best-organized books on "How to Use Photoshop", he has really outdone himself with his latest, The Art of Photoshop. It showcases Daniel Giordan's own work with clear step-by-step explanations. It is published in large format -10 x 10 inches- with color illustrations, keyboard shortcuts for both Macintosh and Windows users and screen captures, of the tools in Photoshop that all artists could master.

I must admit, that although I have learned tons from his "how to use" books, this book was a bit over my head. It is definitely aimed at the creative artist crowd! After picking this book up several times just to sit it back down. Several pots of coffee, brought me more than I ever thought I wanted to know about: PhotoShop - The following is a list ... from the book that I found ... explained and illustrated throughout the book.

Image Editing:

Optimizing - Tools for Optimizing the Tonal Range - The Histogram Window and The Info Palette are explained in detail ...

Enhancing Focus - Image focusing tools - The Unsharp Mask Dialog Box - ...- The Gaussian Blur Dialog Box ... - The Add Noise Dialog Box

Curves - Tools For Working with Curves - Curves Dialog Box ... Curves Tonal Grid ...

Color Correction with Curves ...

Adjusting Hue and Saturation ..."

Adjusting Layers ... Montage:

Silhouetting with the Extract Filter - The Extract Dialog Box ... The Painting Tools ...

Layer Masks - Layers Mask Controls in the Layers Menu - ... Layer Mask Controls in the Layers Palette ...

Clone / Stamp Tool - The Stamp Tools ... The Clone Stamp Options Bar ... The Pattern Stamp Options Bar - ...

Blending Modes - The Blending Modes Menu ...

Special Effects:

Custom Brushes - Brush Options Bar ... Brushes Palette ...

Distort Filters - The Distort Filters Submenu ...

Making Patterns - The Pattern Dialog Box ... The Tile History Options ...

Gradients and Gradient Maps ...

Liquify Filter - Liquify Dialog Box - View Options Control ...

Lighting Effects - The Lighting Effects Dialog Box...

I confess, I didn't create anything close to the illustrations showcased in this book. I did find new skills and inspiration, and I also managed the line scribble technique used on several of the illustrations in the book. Only my scribbles were not created with the same creative intention. I feel the book was a little overwhelming, and should have included a little more basic-basic Photoshop "how to" -Daniel Giordan is famous for bringing it down to the Intermediate level, but if you are looking for a book packed with advanced level options to create your own artistic statements -this is your book