"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug, Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

Creating memorable photographs is a process that starts before you edit an image in Photoshop, before you capture the image, even before you pick up the camera. You must first approach the subject with the proper sense of perception, with the ability to visualize the finished print before you commit a scene to pixels, but still be flexible and spontaneous. Master Fine Art photographer Vincent Versace has spent his career learning and teaching the art of perception and how to translate it into stunning images. In Welcome to Oz, he delves into what it means to approach digital photography cinematically, to use your perception, your camera, and Photoshop to capture the movement of life in a still image.

• Adapt your workflow to the image so you always know how best to use your tools
• Turn a seemingly impossible photographic scenario into a successful image
• Practice “image harvesting” to combine the best parts of many captures to create an optimum final result
• Create black and white prints that have the look, feel and “richness” of traditional silver prints without ever leaving the RGB color space

Customer Review: Inspirational

This book is inspirational; there are 4 or 5 very detailed step by step exercises. There are, also, many example pictures of finished work, like the one on the cover. It is a pity that the author has chosen the "less beautiful" pictures for developing the exercises. Don't expect to find how to make the one of the cover.

Customer Review: Some great concepts - very sloppy editing

Versace's book introduces some great concepts about seeing and handling images that are not found in your typical Photoshop book and are always given from the perspective of a practicing photographer rather than a computer jocky. It is designed however as a tutorial with the intention of having the reader actually do all the exercises not just once, but several times. All great advice, but there is one aspect of this book that is exasperating. The editing is terrible. I have found this problem with many technical tutorial books. I believe it is because the editor does not have the knowledge to know when something is amiss in the instructions and the author is too close to his material to see the ambiguities and layout mistakes are never picked up. In layout mistakes, the author never sees them and the editor has no clue if they exist or not. It is only the poor reader trying to follow very detailed instructions that picks up these gafs.

In this book, I found every tutorial had mistakes in the instructions with steps out of order, ambiguity in instructions, mismatched example images for the step involved, layer masks that did not match the instructions. Truly maddening. These types of books should be proofed by a student so that these mistakes can be reported and fixed.

So I have started doing the exercises, but when I come to a step that has mistakes, I just have to wing it. Frustrating for an expensive book.

One reviewer mentioned that the exercises depended on using proprietary plug-ins. Well, he does encourage the use of Nik plug-ins, but does usually give you a work around with the exception of the Nik Skylight filter. He also notes that you can freely download time-limited trials that can be used to do the exercises. I agree that the arrangement between Versace and Nik is just a bit to tight in this book.

Overall I am glad that I am working through this book, but poor production practices have made it a struggle and thus my 3 star rating.

Also it should be noted that Versace's handling of images is quite theatrical with very strong lighting effects that will strike some viewers as phoney looking. This however is this photographer's style. I believe that the concepts he is trying to impart can all be used but much more subtly if his style seems way over the top to you.

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