Page 14 - Enhancing CAD Drawings with Photoshop

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Introduction

Adobe Photoshop is the program of choice for dealing with still images and photographs. Photoshop
has been around since the dawn of time in computer years, so most people picking up this book have
probably used Photoshop before to resize and print photos at least. If you are one of the few who has
not used Photoshop before, never fear: no experience is assumed or required in this book.
You can use Photoshop for so much more than resizing and printing images; Photoshop is an
indispensable tool for enhancing the level of your graphical communication.
This book is for architects, designers, engineers, industrial designers, builders, real estate
developers, web designers, artists, students, and anyone who communicates with drawings in
their work. Each chapter exposes you to concepts and techniques that you can integrate into your
digital work flow in conjunction with other software such as AutoCAD and Autodesk VIZ. You
will find step-by-step tutorials that reveal a wide variety of techniques built on many years of
real-world experience. You’ll learn how to enhance your graphical presentations and gain impor-
tant marketing benefits for your practice.

How to Use This Book

The first three chapters teach essential concepts: the basics, working with color, and digital dark-
room skills. Absorb the concepts in these chapters in a linear order before taking on the tutorials
in the rest of the book. If you have been using Photoshop for years and feel that you are well aware
of how it all works, feel free to jump ahead.
Chapters 3 through 9 are self-contained, so you can read them in the order you prefer. These
chapters feature tutorials that take you step by step through many complex procedures. The goal
of performing these steps on your own is to aim for an understanding that you can abstract into
real-world situations.
Since every project presents different obstacles and opportunities, I urge you to focus on the
concepts and techniques presented, rather than memorizing the specific steps used to achieve the
desired result.
The best way to build skills is to perform the steps on your computer exactly as they are pre-
sented in the book during your first reading. After you achieve the desired result, start over and
experiment using the same techniques on your own project (whether invented or real). Only after
you have practiced can you abstract the techniques performed; then you really begin to own the
knowledge.