Book Review
Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann. Que. 2001. $50.
reviewed by Rick Fischer
This book opened my eyes to the potential of setting up a business restoring
and retouching
photos - both digital and print. There is no attempt to cover the "business"
side of the enterprise.
What you'll get is step-by-step instructions on how to do the restoring and
restoration with Photoshop.
Much of the book deals with old photos. Yes, really old photos - those that
have faded, been scratched,
torn or defaced in any of a hundred ways. One of the examples verges on alchemy
(see figure 1 and 2).
Sean Melnick, one of Eismann's students, took the torn picture (figure 1) and
created the family portrait
you see in figure 2. Pretty incredible!
In the hands of a practiced technician, Photoshop can work wonders.
Photoshop Restoration and Retouching is a "possibilities" book as
well as a "how to" book. You'll see
what is possible, then learn how to work the magic. The "how to" part
is listed in discrete steps
(for both PC and Mac). There are illustrations for every procedure described.
In place of a CD, Eismann has a supporting Web site that contains many of the
pictures illustrated in the
book. Click on Tutorial Images. Then grab those pictures, follow the instructions
and see how your
results compare with hers.
Here are some of the topics covered:
That's it. There's more, of course - things like how to make a person look
more slender and
make models look even more beautiful. It's a complete course. You'd pay $400
if you could
take such a course at the University of Memphis. But they don't offer anything
like this. It's a
niche book. This is where photography is going and those that have the skills
detailed in this book
will be ready for what comes next.
