“The magic of black and white” by Andrew S. Gibson – e-book review

 

 

 

“The magic of Black & White- Part III Nine photos” by Andrew S. Gibson is the newest release from the Craft & Vision. The e-book describes some advanced techniques to improve your black and white images. Nine images are used as examples, with 36 pages of detailed explanation, how the final effect was achieved. The photographs are first presented as w double page spread, so you can fully enjoy the detail. Then the post-processing is described. The steps are not time extensive, and in just few minutes you can give your black and white image a completely different feel. This book, however, builds strongly on the use of basic Photoshop CS (or Photoshop Elements) techniques described in the Part II of the series, so it might me worthwhile to read the whole set. But if you read it or have an idea on turning your images into black and white, you can follow easily through toning, exposure blending, very cool brush texture effect, soft focus (Orton effect) and creation of diptychs and triptychs. All those tutorials will take your photography and Photoshop skills to the whole new level and enhance your images, not only those in black and white. I especially enjoyed creating the blue and cream split tone. It is an interesting combination of two traditional duotones- sepia and cyanotone, which gives an image a fresh look. You can check the blog tomorrow to see the resulting image.
Here is what the Craft & Vision says about the new e-book:
The Magic of Black & White – Part III, Nine Photos, takes us through nine gorgeous black and white images with the goal of teaching more advanced techniques to give our images more subtlety and power. Clearly taught in Photoshop, and 5 of the lessons in Photoshop Elements, Andrew takes us through Toning, Split Toning, Exposure Blending, Textures, and the creation of Diptyches and Triptyches, all without losing sight of the idea that our work should be driven by intent with the goal of creating photographs that honour the Artist’s need for expression and the Geek’s need for excellence of craft. And all that without getting mired down – the examples and the illustrations Andrew provides compliment his clear teaching style and make this book a pleasure to read.
As usual, for four days after the new release you can use discount codes when you make a purchase at Craft & Vision new web page. If you use the promotional code WHITE4 at checkout, you get “The Magic of Black & White (Part 3)” for only $4 OR if you use code WHITE20 you will get 20% off when you buy 5 or more eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST August 22, 2010.
If it is the first time you heard about the Craft & Vision e-books, consider this. Any time, you can buy the whole collection with 20% discount. Right now, it consists of 15 e-books, and covers subjects like improving your photography without buying gear, starting with video recording, running a photographic business, or just beautiful collections of images, with description of how and why they were taken.
Also, all the books are also available as iPad apps, and there is an accompanied by free app store to download.
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