Caplin - 100% Photoshop: creating stunning illustrations without using any photographs

Steve Caplin

London, 2010

Photoshop is the world's best-known, best-loved and just downright best photographic manipulation application. It's used by retouchers, fine artists, graphic designers, photographers, and everyone who works with images in any form.

But there's another side to Photoshop. In my work as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines, I frequently have to come up with a finished image against impossibly tight deadlines. And if I don't have a suitable photograph of a flying saucer, or a leather book from just the right angle, or an award trophy, or a paperclip, then I often end up drawing it directly inside Photoshop.

Drawing in Photoshop isn't just a second-rate alternative when we can't find the right image. When we draw an object, we can create it at exactly the shape and angle we want. We can also make it perfectly in focus, with perfect lighting. Drawn objects can be crisper and better defined than even the sharpest photograph: it can often be quicker, too, to draw something rather than to find the real thing and photograph it.

There's a real pleasure to be taken from creating an entire illustration from scratch, without using any photographs whatsoever. And while we might still use a photograph as reference material, this is no different to a conventional artist using a model or prop to draw from.

Everything in this book has been drawn entirely in Photoshop, using only the filters and tools that come with the application. Although Photoshop has got better and better with each new version, there's nothing in this book that can't be achieved with a version that's five or more years old.

Drawing from scratch in Photoshop is both hugely enjoyable and highly instructive. By creating our objects we learn a lot about how real world items reflect light, how surfaces are constructed, and how shadows can help make an image more dramatic and help it to look more realistic. And by learning to draw objects, we also improve our Photoshop skills tremendously.

This has been an enormously enjoyable book to write. I hope you get as much pleasure from using it.

Page references

Superscript numbers refer to the page in the book on which a technique is explained for the first time. So if you're instructed to use the Clouds filter20, it means the filter is explained in full on, .

Got a problem?

If you get stuck, don't understand a technique or simply want to show off your work, visit the How to Cheat in Photoshop Reader Forum. It's a great place to ask questions - and they'll usually be answered within an hour or two. Go to this address:

www.howtocheatinphotoshop.com

and click the button for the Reader Forum. You'll find me and other like-minded Photoshop artists ready and willing to help you out, so take the plunge and join the friendliest and most helpful online Photoshop community.

Selection tools

All Photoshop work involves making selections of one kind or another. Here's a quick primer on how to get the most out of using the tools.

The Move tool