Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Contemporary Techniques and Tools for Digital Representation in Site Design [ペーパーバック]

Bradley Cantrell and Wes Michaels have authored a concise and beautifully illustrated book. They know their stuff and it shows. The book presents a detailed overview of digital methods, graphics and tools used in landscape architecture and related design professions. The clearly written content encompasses varying software and graphic. The images are excellent representatives of the graphics and methods the book's content advocates.

The book focuses on the creation of graphics type and not just on specific graphic programs. The authors took into account the flexibility in which many designers create representative graphics. This smart approach allows the book to center on the creation of rich representations of the landscape, but still delve in to the specifics of the programs used by design students and professionals.

Each chapter and section demonstrates varying techniques. From using Photoshop to create sections and plan graphics, to scaling and working with aerials. The authors demonstrate how to integrate CAD with Adobe Illustrator in an easy but important workflow. The book reviews a variety of 3D modeling programs including 3D Max and SketchUp and the type of graphics these programs can generate. One favorite chapter includes a step-by-step tutorial on creating Photoshop Perspective Collage. And this is just a sampling of what the book contains. The comprehensive nature of the book is phenomenal.

The authors move the discussion beyond just `how to' and discuss digital theory. Of particular note is a dialogue on how current digital methods are directly informed by the tradition of ink, pen and paper which was the backbone of graphic representation for decades. Framing the book's methods in the long tradition of hand-drawn illustrations emphasizes why design practitioners must read and use this book; it's a milestone in bringing the design community up to date to the level that design should be represented and practiced.

The book's approach and theories on digital presentation will elevate professionals and students practicing landscape architecture and related fields.

Daniel Tal, author of Google SketchUp for Site Design: A guide to Modeling Site Plans, Terrain and Architecture

This is a great book for the right person, but let's be clear on what it does: It helps you take the .PDF files you export from your CAD program and import them into Photoshop or Illustrator to render them for presentation. It also walks you through using Sketch-up and 3D Max to create perspective or 3-D style renderings.

This is not for the average design-build contractor who wants to add a little spice to his or her drawings, because all of the techniques outlined assume you want to spend a decent amount of time tinkering with the plans. If you need some drag n drop or fast click color, I'd suggest using Dynascape with the color module or one of the other CAD-based programs that do that for you fairly simply. It's definitely not a book for homeowners.

Instead, this is for architects or designers who have enough budget in their project to allow for spending 4-8 hours or more creating colored digital renderings for presentation. This book assumes you're working with a CAD program and have the adobe suite of products, including Photoshop and illustrator. If you have both a CAD program and Photoshop at least, then this book will take you through the basic Photoshop activities you need to do to render your project for presentation without using those stinky chartpak markers.

If you are already proficient at Photoshop, this book won't teach you much that is new. The section on Sketch-up and 3D Max are small and fairly basic. But if you have gotten Photoshop and just aren't quite sure how to get started using it for this kind of rendering, then this will walk you through it perfectly.

The question you'll want to ask yourself is: "Do I want to learn ALL about Photoshop, or only how to render landscape plans in Photoshop?" If the answer to that is the second, then this book is exactly what you need. It does a great job of showing exactly how to do that. But if you want to learn Photoshop properly, then the techniques in this book aren't so specialized that a non-specific but thorough book on Photoshop wouldn't cover it. The strength of this book is that it is SO specific in showing exactly this one kind of rendering work and how to do every element of it.

This is a textbook format book and as such is hard to sit down and read for a stretch. Many books nowadays that are instructive take a more casual tone and don't bother stating things that should be obvious like textbooks often start out by doing. But the benefit of this textbook style of writing is that the authors are very thorough and take you through every action step by step. They have provided tons of screenshots and pictures of exactly what the menus look like and what your rendered drawings should look like at each stage. It's a very thorough book and if this is the kind of help you need, you won't regret buying this book.

This book explains how modern landscape architecture is done for the layman as well as enhancing digital computer skills for the seasoned professional. The integration of analog and digital representation is fascinating and changes with advancements in technology. The book gives insights into past/present design techniques as well as speed/efficiency among other things. From the Preface, "each section tackles the basics of the subject matter and each chapter introduces a short background with an explanation of how to accomplish a phase of the representation process with current digital tools."
The first chapter deals with basic computer information and is explained well.
Key Points I Found:
Linework - use CAD; can be done with other programs or modified with other programs.
Color - New to me was the use of Adobe's Kuler website to save/share color palettes.
Author gives good explanations of image size, resolution & pixelation.
Rastor vs. Vector - Rastor, plan ahead for final size (print/plot). Vector, difficult to blend objects.
Document planning: final size/scale - plan ahead.
"Thinking about how all of these images will be created from a single set of drawings is critical to producing efficient and effective drawings."
Google earth - used in early design stages before a detailed site survey.
Photoshop software is explained in great detail with the software's interfaces shown.
Adobe Illustrator is covered.......drawing lines and shapes, symbols, image symbols, text and leaders.
Exporting from AutoCAD to Photoshop is covered.
Color shading using layers is covered in detail.
Creating textures via patterns.
Perspective illustration - combining a variety of information.
3D Techniques starting with models or photos.
Working on a project and using various softwares is explained in great detail. Indeed a person who does not know the ins and outs of landscape architecture could start a business after reading this book - provided of course that they have basic engineering/architectural knowledge.
Having never used Photoshop; I learned through this book that Photoshop can be used as a design tool and not just a photo editor. It can also be a time saver by rendering color quickly for interim drawings.
Great use of drawings and photographs!!
This book gives ideas and examples of using the latest software as "an array of digital tools". A quote from the Preface: "As designers, we attempted to create a book that focused on getting the job done." They succeeded 100%