How to Cheat in Photoshop CS4 - The art of creating photorealistic montages

* New! Zip through the learning curve in a snap with the free DVD!

* Hundreds of new Photo Objects, companion project files, QuickTime movie tutorials, sample plugins, and more.

* Don't miss the website www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com complete with Reader Forum where Steve answers your questions directly!

When you're short on time with crunching deadlines, but there's no way you can sacrifice quality, this book/DVD comes to the rescue. Nobody knows more about how to work fast under pressure and still produce top-notch photographic images than hands-on graphic artist and journalist, Steve Caplin.

Steve cuts through the grind with on-the-job, do-it-now skills, techniques, and shortcuts guaranteed to show you how to work faster, smarter, and better to produce the best work of your life. With a lifetime of practical experience in photo-montage Steve is the go-to person for professional designers, graphic artists, illustrators, photographic retouchers, and students of design media and illustration who want to create photorealistic effects using Photoshop.

Updated for Photoshop CSX, this must-have resource is also backwards compatible - relevant to any version of Photoshop.

'How to Cheat in Photoshop CSX' helps you "cheat in" (or take advantage of) Photoshop in two important ways. You learn how to make images look like photographs, when they're not so that you can create photographic work without a studio. And you find useful shortcuts to work more efficiently, economically, and with quick solutions to achieve the same superb results that come from long, complex operations that take forever.

Whether you're working for print or the web, dip into this book and extract the info you need - fast. Icons mark where Photoshop files or movie tutorials are available for you to open immediately to try for yourself. Stuck? Visit the Reader Forum on the web and question the author directly (and expect other readers to weigh in, too!) at www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com.

Crammed with gems that other books simply don't cover, and unique in that it's written by a working professional sharing his tips on how he makes money producing this imagery, this book/DVD excels in practical tips to turn the ordinary into the awe-inspiring, quickly. Don't miss how to create new artwork from scratch from starting points that aren't always obvious.

This fully updated new edition shows you how to get the most out of Photoshop CSX, including the Quick Selection and Cloning tools, and more. Yet it's backwards compatible with previous releases of Photoshop. The book's step-by-step tutorials alongside the DVD packed with hundreds of images, project files, and live tutorials show you how to:

* Create convincing smoke effects and make effective explosions - the simple way
* Take years off someone's appearance
* Turn a photograph of someone looking straight into the camera into a different perspective with the entire head (not just the eyes)
* Modify a statue so it looks like a living person or paint hair directly on any surface
* Produce the perfect cutout in the shortest time with Photoshop CSX's new Quick Selection tool... and more

A host of timesaving techniques and insider secrets teach you to work faster and more adeptly moving from the problem to the solution to get fantastic results!

Steve Caplin is a professional graphic artist, author and journalist.