Book Review - Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Dan Moughamian & Scott Valentine

Real World Compositing with Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Dan Moughamian & Scott Valentine.

This book is an affordably priced solution for those amateur retouchers/digital photographers looking to transition to the pro level. This is not a book for learning how to use Photoshop. It's a book for those intermediate level users who need help to develop planning and workflow skills.

The beginning of the book talks about pre-viz and planning. The authors clearly have a great deal of experience and share some great insights for you to be taking into account when planning your composites.

While I found the chapter on lighting to be rather light, the authors made some good recommendations for some other reading sources for further study. One of the best chapters is about the new 3D modeling and rendering features now available in CS4 Extended. The authors gave a good introduction to this new feature as well as a good intro to Cinema 4D as a complementary app.