[grygarness]

Glad you liked it!
It's true, although I offer at least 3 ways of so-called dodging and burning I don't talk about D&B at great length. Why? Because the principles are essentially simple. Make something lighter... make something darker. Preferably with a safety net and a threshold that stops you from going too far. What I do stress a lot is working with full editability, and developing the visual skills that ensure that you don't go overboard, and don't inadvertently change the shape of the face. I actually dislike the term Dodging and Burning, because I have printed both color and BW in the traditional darkroom for over 10 years, and I must say that the way we use it in retouching is not comparative to the original D&B. If we broaden our minds, a lightening or darkening adjustment layer applied locally through a mask is the same as D&B, whether it's applied with a gradient, a large brush, or a tiny brush. However, I choose to call that Local Color Adjustment – not D&B. For me, the really exciting thing is when you manage to find a way of selecting the problem areas, thereby establishing a threshold for the adjustment, so you can work with bigger brushes. For me, 90% of Photoshop work is color work – even sharpening is essentially a color adjustment. The remaining 10% is just moving pixels around.

I do a lot of work for the music industry, and apart from covers, most of the work has to be done pretty fast. I often get 20-30 press shots of an artist, to do in a day or two. Musicians – as you know – come in all shapes and sizes, and many faces bear evidence of a rock'n roll lifestyle. So I get no time to faff around (as we say here). They have to look perfect, natural, and effortless. All within 30-60 minutes. Often they are male, and there's no way you can make them look plastic fantastic. I would have loved to show you those before/afters but I can't. Their names and faces are too well known.

I thought long and hard about putting out an extract of the book when I released it. I could never find one chapter that summed the whole book up. So I am putting it on Google books instead, where you can see 25%. It might take up to 3 weeks. I have 2 books there already – both on color. They are the top 2 on this list: http://books.google.co.uk/books?q=gr...G=Search+Books
---Gry

[studionewmarket]

this looks very interesting, priced right (unlike some $200 plus cd) and I am just about ready to buy it, just hoping the pages are formatted well for printing, I like to have the text in my hand and want to print few pages at the time, especially when I am working on one monitor set up.
Wish you success with this, not many good products on the market.
Peter

[grygarness]

It's hi-res printable, and each user can print a copy for themselves. Any distribution of the book is not permissible – neither electronically nor in print. Of course it's Copyrighted and there are complete restrictions on extracting, copying or changing the text. To keep it environmentally friendly I suggest to everyone that you only print what you intend to work on. Save some of that Norwegian Wood for me. (Spoken like the true Norwegian that I am). --- Gry

[charlotte]

I hate to ask this question and debated asking it but here it goes.
When running the Digital powder action I get this error message
the command select is not currently available
what am I doing wrong---sorry for having to ask
Char

[grygarness]

I can't tell you what you're doing (not psychic quite yet) but I can guess that you're getting a warning saying No Pixels Were Selected ... because you haven't painted the skin in (as the prompts you to do on the Stop). If nothing was painted in, it simply has nothing to select, and Photoshop warns you of this. But I say again – I can only guess at what you're doing, because you don't mention where in the Action it's happening. As I say in the ReadMe I recommend doing the actual tutorial before you do the Action. This action has been tested a thousand times at least, and it works. But do read the tutorial, roll up your sleeves and paint in. I suggest you try it on a flat image first time, just to keep things simple. As I say in the ReadMe for Actions, I cannot provide individual support. Everything is written in the book. It explains it better than I can do by email because you have the screenshots there. Let us know when you've sorted it out. Good luch --- Gry

[charlotte]

the only error I get is
the command select is not currently available
its stops on
select tool preset airbrush 100 at 30/30
with the error message
I will try and do the tutorial in the book

[grygarness]

Ah, you got to the point where the Action is (almost) done. The preset is not important. Just press Stop or Continue and the Action will stop. The Preset is an optional extra which you can make if you wish. I still think you should read and do the tutorial to get the feel for the values of the filters and the whole procedure.

[charlotte]

I am doing the tutorial now. This book is great I absolutely love it.

[woofw]

I purchase it thru paypal and downloaded the 3 ebooks 2 days ago and never got an email about the password. I emailed the author and till now have not recieved a reply, has my 30pounds gone to waste?

[grygarness]

I am sorry this has happened. It has happened once before, and may have been caused by spam filters – possibly both yours and mine. I make an effort to look over my spam-filtered emails every day but some might slip through. I will send you the passwords as a private message.

Thanks for letting me know and please confirm that you have got them.

[woofw]

thanks Gry, I've recieved the passwords.

[mistermonday]

Hello Gry,
I just downloaded the book and took a quick scan from 1 to 190. Looks like an absolutely excellent work! You have covered all of the key areas of this type of retouching in one well wriiten, well illustrated, document. It's really great to have it all in one manual. Best wishes for successful sales.
Regards, Murray

[studionewmarket]

is there a place where images from the book can be downloaded? I have really enjoyed the aspect of being able to work on the same images as presented in number of other Photoshop books, like to see the same effects on my computer.

[grygarness]

Due to the nature of the images I'm afraid not. Most of the images are of professional models who would take great exception to being used for training purposes. Retouching is a very sensitive subject, and it's tricky to get permissions from models at at all. There are a few stock images there, but only very few. it should be easy enough for you to find images these days, with royalty-free stock libraries offering images for next to nothing. I suggest you look for images that are not retouched too much though, as I've noticed a tendency in stock to over-smooth the skin. --- Gry

[AFrazier]

I only just now read this thread, and I'm going to look into purchasing the book, but if you don't mind saying ... do you discuss curves techniques? I've found that some of the best color correcting is done that way, and I'd like to learn more about it. However, thus far, not too many books on the subject. The particulars seem to be a kept secret, else not too many people know much about curves.