A wonderful way to bring your visions to life: Beth Wheeler is a quilter, and she wrote this book for quilters, but the techniques she presents have much broader application. Painters, collage artists, journalers, and anyone else who wants to use Photoshop to make unique images from photos will find plenty of information and inspiration in Next Steps in Altered Photo Artistry. And the included CD, with images used in the book, enables you to follow the steps to get the same results you see in the book. It’s a great way to learn!

Beginning with Photoshop navigation, Wheeler gets you comfortable with standard commands and frequently used functions, including cropping and resizing images – so you can use just part of a photo, if you want, and size it to fit your project.

Especially helpful to me was the section on color functions – adjusting hue and saturation, along with replacing one color with another, are two functions that instantly expand moods and effects you can create with one image. I was also pleased to learn about the colorization function – I converted a photo to black and white, then colorized it to get that vintage, hand-tinted look. How cool is that?

I played for a long time with the techniques in the chapter called Abstraction. These are fun, fun, fun! Making changes in perspective and applying distortion filters to the image can give a soft, dreamy look or transform your image into something else altogether.
The one-page section on embellishment seemed out of place and, as brief as it was, might just as well have been left out. But no matter: The gallery of images that follows is so inspiring, my mind is busy with ideas for altered photo applications on textiles as well as collages and maybe some greeting cards for the coming holiday season. ( )

Next Steps in Altered Photo Artistry by Beth Wheeler is a great book for anyone wanting an easy start to making art quilts. Using your printer to print your photos on fabric is both fun, easy and quick! In Beth Wheeler's book, she outlines how to use the PhotoShop editing program to adjust, edit, apply filters, or change digital photos you have taken on your camera. She gives many examples, and includes ideas on layout ideas you can use in making your quilt or other fiber art.
I do not own PhotoShop, but I do have PaintShop Pro. I have a somewhat limited use of this program, but I was able to follow along in the book using my PaintShop program. The programs are similar enough that using this book was still helpful.
I recommend this book for everyone that would like to use photos in making art quilts or memory quilts!
Next Steps in Altered Photo Artistry by Beth Wheeler is a great book for anyone wanting an easy start to making art quilts. Using your printer to print your photos on fabric is both fun, easy and quick! In Beth Wheeler's book, she outlines how to use the PhotoShop editing program to adjust, edit, apply filters, or change digital photos you have taken on your camera. She gives many examples, and includes ideas on layout ideas you can use in making your quilt or other fiber art.
I do not own PhotoShop, but I do have PaintShop Pro. I have a somewhat limited use of this program, but I was able to follow along in the book using my PaintShop program. The programs are similar enough that using this book was still helpful.
I recommend this book for everyone that would like to use photos in making art quilts or memory quilts!
http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=1386 ( )