Product Description

"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug,  Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

Creating memorable photographs is a process that starts before you edit an image in Photoshop, before you capture the image, even before you pick up the camera. You must first approach the subject with the proper sense of perception, with the ability to visualize the finished print before you commit a scene to pixels, but still be flexible and spontaneous. Master Fine Art photographer Vincent Versace has spent his career learning and teaching the art of perception and how to translate it into stunning images. In Welcome to Oz,  he delves into what it means to approach digital photography cinematically, to use your perception, your camera, and Photoshop to capture the movement of life in a still image.

•  Adapt your workflow to the image so you always know how best to use your tools
•  Turn a seemingly impossible photographic scenario into a successful image
•  Practice “image harvesting” to combine the best parts of  many captures to create an optimum final result
•  Create black and white prints that have the look, feel and “richness” of traditional silver prints without ever leaving the RGB color space

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #378257 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug,  Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

From the Back Cover
"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug,  Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

Creating memorable photographs is a process that starts before you edit an image in Photoshop, before you capture the image, even before you pick up the camera. You must first approach the subject with the proper sense of perception, with the ability to visualize the finished print before you commit a scene to pixels, but still be flexible and spontaneous. Master Fine Art photographer Vincent Versace has spent his career learning and teaching the art of perception and how to translate it into stunning images. In Welcome to Oz,  he delves into what it means to approach digital photography cinematically, to use your perception, your camera, and Photoshop to capture the movement of life in a still image.

•  Adapt your workflow to the image so you always know how best to use your tools
•  Turn a seemingly impossible photographic scenario into a successful image
•  Practice “image harvesting” to combine the best parts of  many captures to create an optimum final result
•  Create black and white prints that have the look, feel and “richness” of traditional silver prints without ever leaving the RGB color space

About the Author
Vincent Versace has received the Computerworld Smithsonian Award in Media Arts & Entertainment and the Shellenberg fine art award and has been nominated three times to the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Vincent produces art for entities as various as Eco-Challenge and the San Francisco Presidio National Park; he teaches at the Santa Fe and Palm Beach Photographic Workshops, and hosts the Epson Print Academy. Articles about his work have appeared in over two dozen photography magazines. You can see his work on the Web at  www.versacephotography.com.Vincent Versace has received the Computerworld Smithsonian Award in Media Arts & Entertainment and the Shellenberg fine art award and has been nominated three times to the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Vincent produces art for entities as various as Eco-Challenge and the San Francisco Presidio National Park; he teaches at the Santa Fe and Palm Beach Photographic Workshops, the Digital Landscape Workshop Series, and hosts the Epson Print Academy. Articles about his work have appeared in over two dozen photography magazines. You can see his work on the Web at www.versacephotography.com.

Customer Reviews

Great concept, flawed execution
I won't spend too much time describing the basic content of this book since that has been well covered by the previous reviewers.

Things that worked for me were:
- building a workflow around how people read photographs
- analysis of common problems and how to resolve them
- descriptions of genuinely useful techniques and good practice
- inclusion of full 16 bit images as examples to work on.

Things I was less than impressed with:
- a large number of typographical errors (no proof reading?)
- procedural errors, so if you follow along precisely with the text you do not end up with the same result as the book examples!
- the odd, possibly doubtful technique. I am fairly certain you do not want to correct a colour cast by taking a white point reading off of a skin tone?
- a number of plugs for Nik software (a PS plug in). Not sure if the author has a commercial interest here or he genuinely believes they are the best around.

Need to be very comfortable with PS to follow along, not least to make sense of things when an error in the description occurs.

4 stars is, perhaps, slightly generous but I think the intent of the book is excellent, and it did teach me a lot.

Adding taste to your Photoshop work
The cinematography art is marked with the deep concern with the dramatic effect of the shoots, backgrounds, lights...etc. This concern is what makes the strong relationship between the image and the story or idea behind it.

Welcome to OZ book focuses on using the light, shadows and image contrast to produce this effect on images using Adobe Photoshop.

Based on his experience, Vincent Versace shows by example how to enhance images and edit camera shoots in Adobe Photoshop. Each chapter concern of specific effect and explain how to accomplish this effect using Photoshop tools. In his first chapter, Vincent shows how to enhance camera shoots for portrait image with editing the light and shadows and adding depth to the image. His example was his shoot to the actress Challen Cates.

The following chapter adds a new skill, which is practicing shooting multiple images for the same object and compile them to produce a final image. Vincent attached an image gallery to show how these practice affect the images and enhance the output of the normal camera shoots.

The book continues experiencing the skills with each chapter either with adding new skills or shows how to use the skills mentioned in previous chapters in a new way.

The book is great book for all whom concern with adding dramatic and artistic effect to images. I see this book is good for all who work in graphic design, photographers and photo-montage specialists.

Fine Art Photography
Quote from the beginning of this book:
"Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. You first have to practice at practicing." - Vince Lombardi

This is NOT a "How to do it" - much more of a "How I did it and why" by the author, Vincent Versace.

At full price it is expensive [but you do get what you pay for in this life] but even so I feel it is worth the outlay [search for it in "New and Used" though].
It takes one through the thought processes and decisions made by the author and is very well illustrated by the authors finished fine art photographs as well as step-by-step results of a handful of his own images.
Some of these step-by-step processes take up to 40 pages each [although not all use this much space]. Vincent Versace goes into exquisite detail with his use of lighting maps; burning and dodging maps; depth of field maps; advanced monochrome conversion advice etc.

Also included with the book is a DVD containing hi-resolution as well as reduced resolution of the images used in the book [for slower computers].
This is a lush and luxorious book but definately not for the beginner. This book is for the medium to advanced practitioner who will already have a reasonably good grasp of Photoshop as well as photography and who is already capable of pre-visualising the final image before pressing the shutter release and, as such, it is, in my opinion really excellent and well worth checking out.