O’Reilly isn’t exactly known for its graphics design books, but it has done a great job of this “A Designer’s Notebook” series. Eight leading French artists each explain a project in this book. Creating Photomontages with Photoshop is a trip to an unexplored world.

Names like Eric Mahe, Patrick Collandre and Bernard Rossi may mean little in the US or even in Europe at large, but the French photographers who together edited this book do know what they are talking about. Each of them has done extensive studio work for large companies, mostly in the fashion business.

What this means is that you can learn a lot from them. A disadvantage of working with such expert studio photographers is that you never can achieve the same high-quality results if you don’t have the same equipment. Unless you’re a studio photographer as well, you can’t set up a scene quite as controled as these photographers were able to.

On the other hand, it’s the techniques that count, and here there’s a lot to be learned. Some of the projects in the book are more or less simple, or should I say less complicated than the others. Most of them are downright expert jobs.

I wouldn’t recommend the book to beginning artists, although the reason would only be that they probably would end up being discouraged by their inabilities.

Looking at your own attempts and seeing what it could have been, is very frustrating and enough for some people to never try again.

The A Designer’s Notebook series has been created to look good as a book, and can also be used as a coffee table book. The price is right as well.