Second in the A Designer’s Notbeook series by O’Reilly, is this retouching book. Again, it has been edited by a group of French artists. I was very enthusiastic about the Creating Photomontages with Photoshop book that I reviewed earlier.

My enthusiasm carried forward with the first few chapters of this book and then quickly tempered. Allthough the first few chapters of this book indeed cover retouching, the rest of the book covers photomontages.

If you need a book on retouching, this isn’t going to cut it. You do learn how to correct and restore an old photograph, but that’s about it as far as retouching is concerned. To me, the standard for a book on retouching remains Katrin Eismann’s book “Photoshop Restoration and Retouching”.

In that book, Eismann explains everything you need to know for less-than-perfect photographs to be edited so they become the best they can be. In this book, Eismann also explains how old photographs can be restored. She covers a number of chapters to this subject, as it is more than just removing some stains. Photos that have been torn up, for example, can be restored too.

But creating compositions from photographs by changing their mood or by adding backgrounds, isn’t what I call retouching. That belongs more to the Photomontages book of this series.

As a book on photomontages, Photo Retouching with Photoshop is great value. However, if you’re looking for the reference on retouching and restoring, you’d better buy Eismann’s book instead.