(This article was originally released on marcoolivotto.com on March 9, 2014.)

A few months ago, a new and exciting Photoshop book appeared on the scene. It was written by Russell Brown — yet not that Russell Brown of Adobe fame. Our own man is an Australian photographer whom I (virtually) met while working on the beta-reading of the latest Dan Margulis’ book — Modern Photoshop Color Workflow. Shortly after such task was finished, I and Alessandro Bernardi got an e-mail from Russell and we were asked to become the beta-readers for his own book — which he was just starting to write. We were very glad to help out and therefore had the privilege to be among the first to read and discuss the contents of Paths to Artistic Imaging in Photoshop.

(This article was originally released on marcoolivotto.com on April 13, 2013.)

By uncanny coincidence, it’s been exactly five-years-and-a-half ago, because the day was October 12th, 2007. The place was Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London – maybe the largest bookstore in Europe, and I was with my mother. It was the beginning of a trip delayed for years which I sort of forced her to take before she became too old to enjoy it. I had always wanted her to visit London, and we had left in the morning of the previous day: October 11th, her birthday.