The fourth edition of How to Cheat in Photoshop will be available in early June. To prevent confusion, the version number is now included as part of the title: so the new book will be called How to Cheat in Photoshop CS3, with a spiffy new cover:

Let me point out first of all that this is not an entirely new book, but rather an update to the earlier editions. That said, it does have more pages, and I've trimmed some of the less important tutorials from earlier editions to make room for, in all, over 90 pages of new and revised material.

New tutorials include several examples that have made Friday Challenges since the last edition, including:

* Day for Night
* Making it Rain
* Blowing Bubbles
* Bringing Statues to Life
* Complex Shadows.

By popular demand, there are also tutorials relevant to problems posed here on the forum:

* Changing skin from black to white and back again
* Making smoke and explosions
* a new tutorial on Ageing, with a corresponding one on Reverse Ageing
* Creating custom brushes to paint hair and beards

I've also included a set of tutorials that seemed of general interest, but which haven't been specifically asked for:

* Creating the effect of light from windows
* Extreme shadows on faces
* Complex head fitting
* Combining body parts (a new version)
* Shading on Hard Light layers
* Opening boxes
* Simulating polaroid photographs
* Building complex Actions
* Using multiple filters in the Filter Gallery to create a watercolour effect

There are also tutorials based on new features in CS3, of course, including:

* Quick Selection tool basics
* Quick Selection tool: complex cutouts
* The Refine Edges dialog
* Cloning in perspective with the new Clone panel
* Special effects with Cloning
* Importing objects into 3D layers
* Using Google Sketchup to build 3D models
* Using cross sections in 3D layers to fit objects in the scene
* Creating multiple effects with Smart Filters

In addition, there's one tutorial I'm particularly pleased with:

* Turning Heads involves turning an entire head from full frontal to three quarter view, using the Liquify tool. You can see a greatly speeded up version of this on YouTube - click here to watch it.

Since the book now comes with a DVD rather than a CD, I've been able to pack in a lot more stuff that there otherwise wouldn't have been room for. So in addition, the new edition includes:

* Many more QuickTime movies showing both new and old tutorials in real time - over two hours of video in all
* 100 new, high resolution, royalty free images from the Photos.com collection, lovingly hand picked for your montaging delight - and there's a special offer for a cut-price subscription
* Over 200 high quality, high resolution images generously supplied by members of this Reader Forum
* Demo versions of all the plug-ins mentioned in the book
* I now have space for higher resolution versions of the tutorial files, and I've increased the size of as many old files as I've been able to do (as well as providing the new ones larger, of course)
* PDF files of all the tutorials that have had to be taken out of the book to make room for the new material.


Buying the book
It helps me a little to keep the forum running if you buy the book through these links.

Readers in the US should click here to buy the book at Amazon.com.

Readers in the UK should click here to buy the book at Amazon.co.uk.

Those of you in Spain, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and other far-flung outposts of the world will just have to pop down to your local bookstores!

This new edition has been a lot of fun to write, largely due to the varied and stimulating input from all the members of this Forum. I hope that, should you choose to buy it, you'll enjoy it. Those of you who have taken part in Friday Challenges may well find your work included in the examples. Whether or not you decide to take a look at the new edition, I hope you'll keep coming back to continue to make this forum so much fun for everyone.

Keep on Photoshopping!
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