New beauty retouching book online

[Tim Whitney]

@ AFrazier,

If you want a really good book on color correction with curves I highly recommend Dan Margulis's Professional Photoshop 5th Edition. The book doesn't get into retouching per-se as it's written from a pre-press perspective. However, you couldn't ask for a better book for learning how do handle color and contrast in Photoshop which will be essential to your retouching efforts.

Also, looks like Gry has 2 books specifically about color on his website. I have not read them, but I can't imagine a book on color optimization that doesn't deal with curves. 3 e-books for £30 sounds like a good deal considering the positive responses in this thread. I'm just waiting for payday myself...

[grygarness]

Curves is for me the most central and the most pure color correction tool. It features in at least 20 of the tutorials, and there are a couple of pages exclusively about Curves. In the Color Optimization book there's much more. When it comes to Curves it's not so much about technique. It's more about understanding how it ticks, and about knowing the primary colors in RGB and CMYK, as well as their effect on brightness. It's also about understanding how to make adjustments that are 100% productive, i.e. if you have a red cast but you want to keep the image bright, you might NOT want to lower the red channel, but instead lift the green and blue. Curves always affect the brightness, so any color moves will have impact on luminance. Mastering Curves is a matter of logic and knowledge. When I've lifted a color cast in Curves, the image always looks sharper, as well as cleaner. I do have one particular method that uses color samplers that I've developed and used for years. It's hard to teach but when people 'get it' they usually love it. However I chose not to feature it in the Retouching book, because I somehow felt it wouldn't fit there. --- Gry

[AFrazier]

I've actually been working with curves quite a bit. I just want to understand them a little more, particularly in the individual channels. I've found that curves work significantly better than messing with levels, contrast, etc.
With layers and masks, I've even been able to change hair and skin colors with very natural effects. It's slow and tedious sometimes, but accurate down to the pixel in ways that overlays and gradient maps never could be.
Pay day is coming soon. I'll pick up the books. You can never learn too much. Thanks for answering.

[grygarness]

Hi All - For those of you who wanted to get a more in-depth taster of the book – just to let you know that Google books has picked up the Retouching book so that you can now see a (random) limited preview of it. It has a feature where you can search for a term, and it will throw up a list of all contexts where the term is found.The other books are also listed there. To see all, go to: http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=gr...G=Search+Books allbest Gry

[Mike Abbott]

I've known Gry's site and her work for some time - so I had no hesitation in picking up a copy of her books. Having spent some time with them I can say that they're excellently written and presented, demonstrate a high level of know-how and offer great value for money. You're getting expertise and know how from a top retoucher here. Buy them before she puts the price up

One great advantage to the way Gry has delivered the books is that the images in the pdf are high resolution - so you can usefully zoom in well beyond 100% for a close up look - something that's impossible in a printed equivalent of course.

I've no connection to Gry. I'm simply writing as a satisfied customer.

Mike A.

[maureeno]

Will these books apply to my use with PS6?

Maureen

[grygarness]

Well, it's been a few years since Photoshop 6, and 4 versions since then. Let me try to remember... Colour management was implemented more or less in version 6. Layers were in essence working as they are now, and the blending modes used in the book were already there, but Groups were called Sets and Clipping Masks were called Groups. Tools were much the same but I seem to remember the Healing Brush came in version 7. Lots of other stuff has been implemented in recent versions, and although the principles of retouching will apply equally well to an older version, there will be lots of stuff that just didn't exist in version 7. Unless I'm getting you wrong and you actually mean Photoshop Elements 6. In which case I'd have to say that there's a reason there's a low-price version and a high-price pro version. My books are aimed at pros and they don't refer to Elements at all. So the answer is, you'd get about 60-80% relevance, depending on prior skills, and ability to be flexible. Hope that helps... allbest – Gry

[mrbeagle]

I bought the color and retouch pdfs, really great info in there Gary thanks so much for taking the time to write them.

[bouloss]

I have all 3 books and I am very impressed with all them. Currently reading the retouch book and its amazing. I recommended to everyone.
paul

[modish]

I bought it. Looks good but I have to finish reading it first to make a complete judgment.

[Caesium]

Gry, I just bought the book and all I can say is "WOW!" After a cursory glance through, I found the photo on page 117. I love this style and was curious as to the exact effects you used in the book on this image since the images itself doesnt seem to appear in the technique overviews (I hope I didnt overlook it).

Also, any chance of getting a lighting diagram from Andrea?

Thanks!!!!

[morpheus1870]

purcahsed today, will give feedback soon.

[modish]

umm...read about half of the book. still debating...will come back when im completely done...

[morpheus1870]

Ok after reading the entire book i have to say one word! EXCELLENT!! very clear, concise and lots of great tips and advice. I learn't different ways of approaching things and picked up ways of working which are more efficent and produce better results. Overall everything is simple to understand in a language that is excellent for beginners and intermediates. The only down side is you are not supplied with the images used in the examples to practice on and replicate the tutorial steps. That aside a very good book.

[041567970]

Gry, thank you for this amazing e-book! I absolutely LOVE it, you sure have a lot of talent and knowledge!

[studionewmarket]

ok, finaly after few weeks I had a chance to go through the whole book, initially after reading first 90 pages or so I was on the fence, just like another poster here, but for me it got much better afterwards, I am very happy I got it and the methods used in the book have already helped me. I would recommend this book for beginner and intermediate, if someone is looking for high end, advanced retouching with only non destructive methods, than this one may not be the book for them. If you are a fan of Godmother and her short video, than this is a book for you, many similar techniques properly explained, perhaps with a bit of less emphasis on d&b. Overall very pleased, good value, inexpensive, would probably give it 7.5 out of 10.



With that in mind I find here some weakness, perhaps something to think about for the next edition.



Not having downloadible images is IMO a major weakness, yes I have read Gry's explanation before, but I am sorry, I don't buy it. The images in the book are wonderfull and a joy to look at, but not very helpfull, I would rather deal with less of an image which would give me an option to see that your tutorials do exactly what they say, based on the same image that I can work on. In few instances I didn't have appropriate image handy and spend half an hour looking for an image on my hardrive, in the end simply downloaded one of the images from Eisman's book, I remembered that she had something I need. Many bestsellers have this option, probably for a good reason.



I also find that in some instances the book is a bit all over the place, with some topics touched upon, but obviously they deserve way more attention to explain in debth which is beyond the scope of the book, so why bother, this imo applies to layers explanation, masking (good books on this subject by Eismann).



Despite some weaknesses I find this to be very good buy.



Thank you.

Peter

[grygarness]

Thanks for the very positive feedback from several of you here on the forum. My next project will be on montage, which of course involves a lot of layers and masking. Studionewmarket (above) thinks I only touch briefly on Layers and Masking in the beauty book, but I have to say it uses Layers for pretty much every tutorial, explaining how and why they are used in each instance. The introduction to Layers is admittedly quite short (3 pages plus a page on Adjustment layers) but it should be pretty concise, and the use of Layers throughout the book is extensive. The word layer is mentioned 191 times throughout. There are 10 pages dedicated to selections and masking plus 8 tutorials that really go into the nitty-gritty of masking, as well as the general use of masking throughout the tutorials.

I have not supplied images for the following reasons:
The book is a guide to retouching for images destined for press and commercial use. The flat sizes of such images never go lower than 25 mb and will most often be between 40-80 mb. If I supplied one file for each tutorial at 25 mb this would amount to 2 gig. Compressed as decent jpegs it would still probably be 250-400 mb. That's an awful lot of bandwith when it gets busy. Katrin Eismann's images are max 5-6 mb in their open flat state. Fine for consumer training, but not for professional training.

Peter, you say you'd rather have lower quality images and access to the images, and that there are plenty of books that offer that. Exactly – there are many of those, but are there many books for the professionals? I opted to use publishable images (most of them already published) mostly of professional models, putting my money where my mouth is. There is no way I would get permissions to distribute images of these models as practice images, only to see them popping up all over the web with various interpretations! I'd get sued! I start each tutorial with a challenge or image 'problem'. If you haven't got the problem yet, why don't you just skip the tutorials you don't need... until you need them. Just like a cook-book, you can pick and choose the 'recipes' you want to make. Can't get fish that particular day... well then you don't have to make a fish dish. However if you retouch for a while, you should come across all the challenges here.

Sorry I can't supply the fish!

allthebest –– GG

[kalun_leung]

Will there be a printed one insteaded of just ebook later? i would more prefer a printed book actually? please let me know because i am really interested in this book.

[LESider]

buy it and print it out. went to kinkos and printed it out for $11 B&W and filled in with about 20 pages printed in color from my printer. The PDF is nice as you can really zoom in on photos and see things better than if they were in a book.

[grygarness]

The book is formatted so you can print what you need, as LEsider suggests. Because CS3 is in the middle of a cycle I doubt if there will be a print version before a possible new edition for CS4. Still – this is only a possibility. Not a sure thing, so don't hold me to it. What do you all think about a DVD version with Quicktime tutorials? Any thoughts? –– GG

[JD Spears]

Gry,
Just bought the Retouching book. I'll let people know what I think after reading. And yes! I personally prefer Quicktime to books anway.

[Mchilly]

Looks interesting to me, I'm checking it out...

[hubas]

Don't know if im just stupid or blind. But i tried the trick with blur and then distort > diffuse glow and when i remove the diffuse glow from the smart object i see no difference what so ever. So as far as i can tell it is the same as just bluring the image.

Did I do something wrong or?

[kalun_leung]

I think a Ebook is fine with me but i just love the feeling of a priunted book, that's may be just a metter of my personal favourites.

Anyway i think i will buy that ebook if there will not be any printed version release.

[Christos]

I just can't seem to get myself to edit at 8-bit. I have always edited at 16-bit to preserve color data.

[Gee]

mmmh i guess i'm gonna buy it.
right now i'm out of money but i guess it's gonna be soon.

i've watched the demo on google and it seems cool...

[dlew308]

I found this website googling for Gry. I'll wait til my PS skills are way better before buying the book. I may wait for the exchange rate to get better too kekeke....

[The Baron]

Got it. Great, totally understandable. Getting excellent results already!

[Gee]

Hello, i've got it since today.
I didnt read everything of course, i just did a "first approach"

what i can say:
it seems that for me, for my present and i hope future utilisation of photoshop it's really nicely done. what i can say so far is that everythings is explained simply etc. NICE WORK.

(i got the 3 package)



THANKS.
(so far i'll say that it's more important one than the Martin Evenings one etc)

[brianr66]

Gry, I purchased your book after stumbling across your site looking for tutorials that specialised in high end retouching, as a graphic designer/digital artist I already had a solid knowledge of Photoshop and needed specific tutorials that went beyond anything I'd seen before and targeted the work I want to get into. Well I have to say that I'm very happy with my purchase and there's so much in it that I'm constantly diving in & out of it just to refresh my first couple of evenings reading it. My technique has improved already as a result and I just wish I had more time to practice what I've learnt. Anyone who's unsure if this book is for them then I'd say buy it, if you want to learn high end retouching then you'll learn all you need in Gry's book, I only wish I could carry a printed version around to read over lunch at work! Amazing work Gry, must have taken you ages to put together.

Brian