Beyond Photoshop: Advanced techniques integrating Photoshop with Illustrator, Poser, Painter, Cinema 4D and ZBrush
Reputable British training book publisher Focal Press is one of the few with a good range of books of interest to Poser 9 / Poser Pro 2014 users, although at March 2012 there’s nothing specific yet from them for those programmes.
Chunky project-based books such as this are always welcome, and this is no exception. Although I have to warn readers that I found the actual Poser content to be very limited. Basically the power of Poser is set aside, in favour of a little simple figure posing in Poser 8, and then rendering out. In all, we get about twenty pages of Poser, which would be useful for beginners…
This is the final image you create from this chapter…
This book is from mid 2010 and so assumes you’re using Poser 8. It also assumes you have a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet. Project files are provided at the book’s website. Be warned that you also need to own all or at least a lot the software, or at least have the trial versions, to get the most out of it.
Overall the book is broken into seven chapters that run for about 50 pages each. Not being a fan of the fiendish and unintuitive Adobe Illustrator, the first three chapters were of little interest to me. However, the presentation was clear, and I’d no doubt be able to produce the intended results from these Illustrator chapters — if I had a couple of days spare and the cost of an old copy of Illustrator. Chapter 2, in particular, shows you how to produce a pleasing retro/children’s look that stradles 2D and 3D…
Chapter 4 is about compositing photos using Photoshop CS4 and Painter X.
Chapter 5 will be the most interest to Poser users although, as stated above, Poser is only used as a generator for figure cut-outs that can be composited with Photoshop.
Chapter 6 uses Cinema 4D and Photoshop to make the picture that adorns the book’s cover…
Chapter 7 uses ZBrush and Photoshop to make a picture of a demon’s head. This is fairly introductory and the absolute beginner would be much better served by the excellent “Z-Brush 4: Essential Training” video DVD at Lynda.com
Overall, it’s high quality content presented as a bit of a jumble of chapters. But if you’re a digital illustrator looking to sample a bit of each programme, within clearly presented and structured real-world projects, this could be for you. Especially at the current low price that it sells for used on Amazon, and if you can only afford used copies of the older software versions the book describes.
Note that the book is also available for the Kindle Fire tablet in the USA
