The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers

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Author: Scott Kelby

Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is not some reprint of an old book, but new text with tons of great, new ideas on how to polish your images. Our capture devises while good don’t capture everything we see. Our images also go to many places, not just the computer monitor. Scott’s book is full of techniques for cleaning up color, sharpening, presentation either by print, web gallery or a host of other ideas, organization, black and white conversion and the list just goes on and on. And all of these techniques take advantage of all the power and ease of Photoshop CS3.This is one monster of a book!" -- Moose Peterson, moosepeterson.com

“In my opinion, The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book is one of those books that contains so much information that it really is a must have. If you are a beginner to Photoshop, you will have everything you need to create better photos. You will be able to learn things in a step-by-step approach that will fine tune your learning. If you are experienced, The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book will fill in many of the holes that you may have because of the depth and breath of Photoshop itself.” -- T. Michael Testi, Blogcritics

Book Description
Scott Kelby, the #1 best-selling Photoshop author in the world today, once again takes this book to a whole new level as he uncovers the latest, most important, and most exciting new Adobe Photoshop CS3 techniques for digital photographers. This major update to his award-winning, record-breaking book does something for digital photographers that’s never been done before–it cuts through the bull and shows you exactly “how to do it.” It’s not a bunch of theory; it doesn’t challenge you to come up with your own settings or figure it out on your own. Instead, Scott shows you step-by-step the exact techniques used by today’s cutting-edge digital photographers, and best of all, he shows you flat-out exactly which settings to use, when to use them, and why.

That’s why the previous editions of this book are widely used as the official course study guide in photography courses at college and universities around the world, and this new edition for Photoshop CS3 exposes even more of the top pros’ most closely-guarded secrets.

Learn How The Pros Do It
Each year Scott trains thousands of professional photographers on how to use Photoshop, and almost without exception they have the same questions, the same problems, and the same challenges–and that’s exactly what he covers in this book. You’ll learn:

• The sharpening techniques the pros really use.
• The pros’ tricks for fixing the most common digital photo problems fast!
• How to get great looking prints (that actually match your screen!)
• A whole chapter on the latest, most requested Photoshop special effects!
• How to color correct any photo without breaking a sweat.
• How to process Raw images, plus how to take advantage of all the new Camera Raw features in CS3!
• The portrait retouching secrets only the pros know about!
• How to add real automation to your work.
• How to show your work like a pro!

Plus a host of shortcuts, workarounds, and slick “insider” tricks to send your productivity through the roof! If you’re a digital photographer, and you’re ready to learn the “tricks of the trade”–the same ones that today’s leading pros use to correct, edit, sharpen, retouch, and present their work–then you’re holding the book that will do just that.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (August 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321501918
• ISBN-13: 978-0321501912
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #464 in Books

Customer Reviews
42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
A 'MUST' have for every photographer ... whatever level!!!, August 10, 2007
By Glyn Dewis "Dinkiz" (Buckinghamshire, UK)
This is Scott Kelby's revised edition of his Photoshop for Photographers series covering CS3, but don't be fooled in thinking that it's just as the previous version with a few added extras. Not only does this book cover the new features of CS3 which are mainly relevant to photographers, it's packed with all new techniques for retouching and finally presenting your images.

Since the last edition, it's clear that Scott Kelby has been studying his craft hard. The book is full, cover to cover with beautiful photographs, taken by him, which are motivating by themselves. Amongst the many, two techniques which stand out to give superb results are what he calls the Trendy High Contrast Portrait Effect and the Hollywood Highlights technique.

The book is written in Scott's easy going humerous style, and yes there are people that don't relate to his sense of humour, but then you can't please everyone. That being said, if you don't like the humour, then do yourself a favour and look past it, cos amongst it is some of the most valuable information, we as photographers need if we want to keep 'up there'.

Covering everything from the Bridge, color correcting, enhancements, presentation and more, as I've said this book is a MUST HAVE for photographers of all levels.

Oh and incase you were wondering, 'no' I'm not on commission ... I just like to spend my money wisely!


16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
My new GO-TO resource for making my images better with CS3, August 20, 2007
By J. Revell "J. Revell" (Manassas, VA)
Am I a Scott Kelby fan? You bet I am! Not because he is a great instructor (which he is) but because he continues to produce books that inform, instruct, entertain, and most importantly, improve my skills as a photographer and user of Adobe Photoshop. This newest, soon to be classic, book is packed so full of useful information that you'll go back to it again and again. If you're looking for in depth discussions of the tools and technologies of Photoshop CS3 like what is Lab color and what does it do, then go look elsewhere. But if you want to know how to use Lab to improve your color saturation or give your image some amazing sharpness then you have found the right book. At 460+ pages, this book is no light weight. You will learn how to use every tool and menu that could possibly be used to enhance your digital photography. Want to know how to make great looking prints? It's in there. Want to know how to resize your images properly, get better flesh tones and smoother skin in your portraits, do you have a desire to make beautiful black and white images and then turn them into spectacular gallery prints? Yup, it's all in there. If that's not enough, Mr. Kelby has also included 4 on-line chapters that you can turn to for even more great tips, and tutorials that were covered in the previous Photoshop for Digital Photographers books but have been updated for CS3. Every lesson in the book is step by step and easy to follow. You can learn at your own pace and even skip around from chapter to chapter to find just that little nugget that you have been searching for to improve your photos. By the way, you might read some reviews about Scott infusing his sense of humor into the book which, in my opinion, is a welcome change from all of the dry, textbook-like Photoshop manuals out there on the market. If that's not your thing, just skip the first page of each chapter and jump into the juicy goodness of the step by step techniques. Bottom line, you want better pictures to come from your digital camera? Just buy the book, you can thank me later!


7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Totally New Edition - It will improve your photographs, September 12, 2007
By Hartley J. Jackson (Lyndonville, VT United States)
This is a brand new, improved, totally revised edition of the best selling Scott Kelby "Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers."

"Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers" has 100 more pages, and to include all the new stuff some items covered in the older book were removed. The removed items are available for downloading on the book's support page. However, you would not know that unless you read the initial Questions and Answers section or this review. This section was fun to read and it also tells where to the pictures you can download.

The topical chapters in the book are presented in the order that a photographer would work, and to properly end the book Scott Kelby has added his step-by-step workflow starting with Bridge and RAW processing to get to the final print.

In Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers, Scott Kelby tells you how he uses the important new additions in Photoshop CS3, and this edition also includes other improvements professional photographers have adopted that were not covered in the earlier edition.

As an example, he explains how to use double processing in RAW to "Create the Uncapturable" by capturing a broader exposure range within one shot. He also describes a method to enlarge photos to produce 26" by 36" posters from a 6 meg camera image.

As a final example, he shows how you can use the Quick Selection tool and Clone Stamp Tool to get a photograph of two doctors together when their schedule does not include time for the two to meet.

"Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers" is a fine book with information that will help you if you are a professional photographer or want to become one. If you are not now using Photoshop CS3 you will want to once you see this book.

Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3

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Author: Scott Kelby

Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Scott Kelby, the world's #1 bestselling Photoshop author, and the man who changed the Photoshop and digital photography world with his ground-breaking, award-winning "Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" unveils a exciting, brand new way of thinking, and working in Adobe Photoshop that will not only change the industry again, but it will change the way we all work in Photoshop forever, so we can finally spend less time fixing our images, and more time finishing them.

You're about to become a Photoshop Shark!
Scott has focused in and really narrowed things down to just exactly which Photoshop tools and techniques we absolutely, positively have to know, and he found that there are just seven major tools, seven major features that we have to master to enhance our images like a pro. But then he took it a step further. Out of those seven major tools, he looked at which parts or sections of those tools do we really need to master, and which parts can we pretty much ignore (in other words, he whittled it down so you're not learning parts of the tools that you're probably never going to need). Then, and perhaps most importantly, he determined exactly when and in which order to apply these seven techniques that make up Scott's amazing "Photoshop Seven Point System."

But the magic of this book, is not just listing the seven tools and showing how they work. It's how they're used together, and how Scott teaches them (and makes it stick), that makes this book so unique. You're not going to just learn one technique for fixing shadows, and another technique for adjusting color (every Photoshop book pretty much does that, right?). Instead, you're going start off at square one, from scratch, as each chapter is just one photo—one project—one challenging lifeless image (you'll follow along using his the same images), and you're going to unleash these seven tools, in a very specific way, and you're going to do it again, and again, and again, in order on different photos, in different situations, until they are absolutely second nature. You're finally going to do the FULL fix—from beginning to end—with nothing left out, and once you learn these seven very specific techniques, and apply them in order, there won't be a an image that appears on your screen that you won't be able to enhance, fix, edit, and finish yourself!

Plus, Scott's techniques work across a wide range of photos, and that's exactly what you'll be working on in the book, from landscapes to portraits, to architectural, to nature, from event photography to everything in between—there isn't a photo you won't be able to beat!

This is the book you've been waiting for, the industry's been waiting for, and Scott's "Adobe Photoshop Seven Point System" is so revolutionary that he's officially applied for a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and this new system is only found in this amazing, ground breaking new book. Once you learn these techniques, and start applying them yourself, you'll be the next one to say—"You can't beat 'The System!'

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press; 1 edition (October 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321501926
• ISBN-13: 978-0321501929
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #524 in Books

Customer Reviews
41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
Best Photoshop Book Ever--The One You'll Actually Use, October 25, 2007
By Janine Smith (Los Angeles, CA United States)
I have a bunch of Photoshop books on my shelf (including Scott Kelby's excellent Photoshop CS3 book). I've never had the time to read them all. Now I don't need to. The 7-point System is revolutionary. Not the techniques themselves, but the way they're put together and taught in this book. You practice the system, over and over, on the same photos that are in the book. By the end, you thoroughly understand the techniques, and the system is second nature.

But here's my favorite part. The last lesson is a refresher course, for those of us who don't use Photoshop every day. If it's been a few weeks or months, the refresher lesson will get you up to speed again in minutes.

This is not a huge book covering every little bit of Photoshop (I've got those sitting on my shelf). It's a book for most of us, who want to learn how to use Photoshop to make our photos look better. As always with Scott's books, it's well-written, easy to follow and fun.


11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A great book for photographers, one of the best, November 12, 2007
By Bart M. Carrig (New York)
I just finished Scott Kelby's "7-Point System" on photoshop techniques. I have been using Photoshop since version 4, now on CS3. I've been to Photoshop World, and have purchased many books on photoshop. I am a landscape photographer, and have a well-established work-flow, but I'm always willing to learn new techniques. I frequently post on Fred Miranda's website. I think Scott Kelby's book is the best and most useful overall Photoshop Book I have read. The workflow is a very good one, well explained, and it implements Photoshop tricks and techniques that I have found hard to master. It is well written and easy to follow. I am very happy to see it incorporates LAB processing as well (I think critical to landscape work; and there's something you wouldn't want to tackle on your own -- be sure to remember the LAB tip in Chapter 21; make the highlight/shadow adjustment in the Lightness channel.) I've already adjusted my workflow; I now use new techniques with confidence thanks to this great book. I give it ALL the stars.


22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
THIS Is The Photoshop Book You Need, October 26, 2007
By Al Morrison (Akron, PA USA)
I've invested a small fortune over the years in Photoshop books, some good...some not so good. Photoshop guru and prolific author Scott Kelby's latest-the 7-Point System-is in a category by itself...absolutely essential. The concept he uses is to guide you in each lesson from original photo to finished using the same adjustments, tools, and techniques...seven points that are easy to learn for a beginner, and already well-known for more experienced Photoshop users. The beauty of the book lies in seeing not just a curves adjustment or a layer mask in use, but actually working on the same photos (downloaded)Scott used and step-by-step bringing it from bland to beautiful.

I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about Photoshop techniques, but this book has done more to improve my workflow and overall approach to what to look for in a photo that I'm editing than anything before it. And using only 7-points to boot! Lesson 1 alone is an eye-opener as you take a barely viewable photo and using those 7 points, end up with a photo anyone would be proud of. There is a huge Wow factor at work in each lesson.

Written in Scott's familiar breezy style, this should be on every Photoshop user's holiday wish list...if you can wait that long. Two thumbs up and a pat on the back to Mr. Kelby for delivering the goods with this one.

Welcome to Oz: A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop

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Author: Vincent Versace

Editorial Reviews
Review
"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug, Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

Book Description
"Vincent Versace is a Renaissance man who has produced the best how-to book of the year! With its subtitle of “A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop” Versace introduces a system for creating images that owes as much to the traditional darkroom as the digital one. Don’t just read the book; study it. The first chapter isn’t called “The Tao of Dynamic Workflow” for nothing and, like the rest of the book, contains Versace’s charm, wit, and wisdom. It’s copiously illustrated with detailed step-by-step examples of techniques that when applied to your own work will turn you from zero to hero. The fact that he’s a heck of a photographer means the book is stunningly illustrated, but it’s also been well designed. It has become a cliché to say that a book could change your life, but this one could." -- Joe Farace, December, 2007 , Shutterbug, Top Digital Books Of 2007; More & Better Digital Imaging Books

Creating memorable photographs is a process that starts before you edit an image in Photoshop, before you capture the image, even before you pick up the camera. You must first approach the subject with the proper sense of perception, with the ability to visualize the finished print before you commit a scene to pixels, but still be flexible and spontaneous. Master Fine Art photographer Vincent Versace has spent his career learning and teaching the art of perception and how to translate it into stunning images. In Welcome to Oz, he delves into what it means to approach digital photography cinematically, to use your perception, your camera, and Photoshop to capture the movement of life in a still image.

• Adapt your workflow to the image so you always know how best to use your tools,
• Turn a seemingly impossible photographic scenario into a successful image
• Practice “image harvesting” to combine the best parts of many captures to create an optimum final result
• Create black and white prints that have the look, feel and “richness” of traditional silver prints without ever leaving the RGB color space

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; Pap/Dvdr edition (December 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735714002
• ISBN-13: 978-0735714007
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8.8 x 0.6 inches
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #5,109 in Books

Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
This raised me to a new level, February 23, 2007
By D. Barrack "RunningHappy" (Atlanta, GA)
I can only thank Vincent for sharing his approach, knowledge, and philosophy. This is not a breeze through, how to book, but rather an approach that will make you think. I have now gone back to tons of photos that I thought were well thought through, applied Vincent's approach, and was so happy with the results. And that just getting through the first 1/3 of the book. This does assume you are very comfortable with PS and already have generally good photos to work with. Just a few thoughts if Vincent is reading through these ...

a) I'm practicing using the techniques but using a Wacom instead. This seems like a great way to go but there's no mention of this in the book.

b) There is heavy use of the render lighting effects. It would be helpful to get into more discussion regarding how to control better this effect.

c) I have tried using multiple lights with multiple subjects (people) in a an image and it's just not intuitive in PS how the lighting behaves. Some discussion about this would be great.


48 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
Look into the Mind of a Master!, December 7, 2006
By Peter Bauer "Author, 'Photoshop CS2 for Dummies" (South Bend, IN USA)
Vincent Versace is, without doubt, one of the greatest photographers of his generation. His prints hang in some incredible collections, he's been honored with quite a few awards over the years, and I think so highly of his work I've actually purchased some. This book is direct access to Versace's workflow and techniques. If you're a photographer who wants to take that next step to "artist," buy this book. You'll see how one of the greatest works his magic. Perhaps best of all, the book includes a DVD with the actual high-resolution image files that he uses, so you can follow along, step-by-step, learning by doing. Afterward, once you understand the how and the why of what Versace is teaching, you can apply the same techniques to your own images.

Why should you take my advice on how to spend your hard-earned money? Let's start with the fact that I'm the book reviewer for "Photoshop User" magazine, have written more than a half-dozen books on digital imaging and photography myself, and am considered by many to be one of the leading authorities on Photoshop. Let me say it again: "Buy this book!"

Happy Photoshopping!
Pete Bauer


16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
If you like Mr. Versaces work, buy this book..., January 31, 2007
By T. Werelius "nullman200" (Woodinville, WA United States)
The book is basically about how to create images similar to Mr. Versace's (not to duplicate his work, but to use his techniques to achieve similar results)

I really love Mr. Versace's images, I have seen them in print on display and am always taken with them.

There are a number of unique things about this book.

First it comes with the images he talks about (full resolution) so that you can try and exactly duplicate his techniques which is very helpful in the learning process.

Second he gives you a idea of why he is doing something and not just how he did it. The approach of the chef vs. the recipe following cook.

Third his approach is one of artistic vision vs. pure representational photography (which in my opinion does not exist) and which I totally embrace.

Fourth he shows you how to use multiple images to overcome limitations of camera gear (dynamic range, depth of field, etc) and how to use Photoshop to add visual flow and direction to produce a final artistic vision.

Fifth he emphasizes what I call just in time pre-visualization with an end in mind. Where many might see an uninteresting subject he can "Fast Forward" through his workflow and pre-visualize a much more beautiful result than just using the camera with its limitations might allow.

Though I love his work, and do recommend this book I can't give it 5 stars since there is room for improvement.

In the book Mr. Versace jumps around at times, repeats concepts just talked about but in a slightly different way (a little confusing) and in general it seems to take most people one or two or three tries to take in what he is explaining.

There are also things I think that need to be expanded upon and others that are distracting. The use of catch phrases "traveling a circle in a straight line" etc. are useful philosophically at times and cute at first, but in my opinion just get in the way of learning overall.

A bit more organization, expanding on some still hazy topics, and cutting down on the eastern philosophy jargon would make it a 5 star work.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers

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5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(19)
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Author: Scott Kelby


Editorial Reviews
Review
Book Description

Free Lightroom 1.1 update available. Simply visit peachpit.com/register to gain instant access.

Scott Kelby, author of the world's #1 bestselling Photoshop book, The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, brings his same award-winning, step-by-step, plain-English style, look and feel to The Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers.

This groundbreaking new book doesn't just show you "which sliders do what" (every Lightroom book does that). This book takes you beyond that to reveal the secrets of the new digital photography workflow, and he does it using three simple, yet brilliant techniques that make this just an incredible learning tool:

1. Throughout the book Scott shares his own personal settings and studio tested techniques he's developed using Lightroom for his own photography workflow since well before Adobe released even the first Beta version. He knows what really works, what doesn't, and he tells you flat out which tools to use, which to avoid, and why.
2. The entire book is laid out in a real workflow order with everything step-by-step, so you can jump right in using Lightroom like a pro from the very start and sidestep a lot of productivity killing road blocks and time-wasting frustrations that might have tripped you up along the way.
3. But what really sets this book apart from the rest, are the last two bonus chapters. This is where Scott visually answers his #1 "most-asked" Lightroom question, which is: "Exactly what order am I supposed to do things in, and where does Photoshop fit in?"

Scott teaches this in a manner we've never seen before in any book, by really showing every step of the entire process, from the initial shoot to the final prints. Both chapters start with an on-location photo shoot, including full details on the equipment, camera settings, and even the lighting techniques. You'll see it all as he takes the photos from each shoot (with you following right along using the very same images) all the way through the entire workflow process, to the final output of the 16x20" prints for the client. Plus, because he incorporates Adobe Photoshop seamlessly right into this workflow, you'll also learn some of his latest Photoshop techniques for portrait and landscape photography, which takes this book to a whole new level.

It's the first, and only book to bring the whole process together in such a clear, concise, and visual way. Best all, it's taught in Scott's trademark plain-English style that has won him legions of Photoshop fans around the world, and made him the #1 bestselling author of all computer books across all Computing and Internet categories since 2004.

If you're one of those people who learns best by actually doing the projects yourself; who learns best without all the complicated technical explanations and confusing jargon, and if you really want to start using Lightroom today to unlock the productivity secrets of "The new digital photography workflow,"----there is no faster, more "straight-to-the-point" or more fun way to learn than this groundbreaking new book, and you are absolutely going to love it!

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: New Riders Press; 1 edition (April 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321492161
• ISBN-13: 978-0321492166
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,306 in Books

Customer Reviews
Comprehensive and/but Breezy, May 16, 2007
By Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA)

Some folks have suggested that Lightroom is so intuitive that you don't need a book to learn to use it. Maybe my intuition is weak, but the more I read about Lightroom, the more I learn it can do, and the more I begin to like it. Although Scott Kelby's book covers all the basics, from importing digital images into Lightroom to outputting them to prints, websites and slide shows, he also shows how to use a lot of other controls and capabilities that I had not come across elsewhere.

Now I'm often put off by Kelby's breezy style of writing (e.g., "that way, when no one's around, you can ...play slide shows until it's time for your weekly therapy session") but here when he uses it in a book that's meant to be read from start to finish, it helps keep one from getting bored. And this book is meant to be read that way by a new user of Lightroom.

What makes the book even more useful is the step-by-step screen saves. The language for each illustration appears exactly adjacent to the illustration, even if that means leaving a lot of white space in the writing. Moreover, to overcome the problems of the Lightroom interface being harder to read on a printed page than on a monitor, Kelby directs your attention to the right place on the screen with a red circle. This may not seem like graphics enlightenment, but it's not a common technique.

I've said that Kelby goes beyond the intuitive. For example, I never would have guessed that Lightroom could be set up so that you could transmit an image directly into your e-mail from Lightroom, but Kelby shows how.

I've also been puzzled by how to move a photo from my internal disc drive to an external drive for archiving with Lightroom. There's no "Move" in the Edit dropdown menu. Then the author explained that I could create a new folder on the external drive from within the Folders Panel, select the image, and just drag it to the new folder. Presto, the image is moved and Lightroom updates its database to show the new location. It may be, with its excellent keywording and metadata facilities, that Lightroom will become the digital asset management solution for a lot of photographers.

I also appreciated the fact that the author was not afraid to say how inadequate the sharpening facility of Lightroom is. But he didn't stop there. He showed how to easily move a picture into Photoshop from Lightroom, sharpen it and then move it back. It still means purchasing both Lightroom and Photoshop, but at least there is a better way to handle sharpening. Given the advantages of Lightroom over Adobe Bridge and ACR as a front end, serious photographers will certainly consider using both pieces of software.

In the last chapters of the book, Kelby takes two different types of photography, wedding and portrait work, and landscape photography, and follows the workflow through Lightroom and Photoshop to tie everything that came before together in a fitting summary.

There's not much talk about art here, but when it comes to using the technology of Lightroom, this book seems to be as good as it gets.

NOTE: Since this book was published, Adobe came out with a significant update to Lightroom (v1.1). Owners of this book may download a PDF file covering the changes in v1.1 by going to www.scottkelby.com and following the links.

A very instructive and clear book on working with Lightroom, April 5, 2007
By calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va)

This book is about "Lightroom", which is a workflow tool aimed at digital photographers that don't want to take the time to become familiar with the mammoth application that Adobe Photoshop has become because it really isn't necessary for the scope of their work. The book gives you step-by-step directions on the detailed tasks of:

1. Importing your photos into Photoshop Lightroom
2. Sorting and organizing your photos using the Library Module
3. Making minor adjustments to photos using the Library Module's Quick Develop panel
4. Performing major adjustments by editing in the Develop Module
5. Fixing common problems such as red eye, noise, chromatic aberrations, etc.
6. Changing color photos to black-and-white using several different methods
7. Sharing your photos via the Slideshow Module including adding music and choosing playback options
8. Using the Print Module to print your photos in a variety of ways such as adding text, setting up color management, and printing multiple photos on one page.
9. Using the Web Module to create a gallery for your photos viewable via the web.

There are two final chapters that act as capstones. The first of these final chapters takes you through the steps you have learned in this book to produce a wedding portrait workflow whose ultimate goal is to have photos that the clients can proof on the web. The second of these two chapters has a workflow that is specifically for outdoor photographers. All through the book the author leads you through his formula for working through each problem. His method doesn't allow you to go off and take several paths. By working through the author's method of doing things, he hopes you will walk away with a clear idea of how to use Lightroom his way and use that as a jumping-off point for your own investigation of the tool. The photos that the author works with are downloadable so that you can follow along with him using exactly the same photos as he does.

Overall, I really liked the author's approach and I thought it was quite clear with plenty of screenshots so that the reader does not get lost. The only thing I did not like about the book is that it has a jokey style that is done to the extreme in places. In particular, the first part of the book has a largely bogus Q&A session that does answer some serious questions but also wastes some serious space just joking around. Likewise, the first page of just about every chapter has a conversational "surfer dude"/Andre Lamothe verbal style before the author gets down to business. However, if you can overlook this, the book is very good at teaching the reader how to work with Lightroom.

Best computer book I've read yet, May 25, 2007
By Pokeweed "Pokeweed" (Denver, CO USA)

I am a very experienced computer user, and have read countless books. This is the best yet. It is extremely well organized. Each section is written in a step by step fashion of what to do. It is written by a photographer - not a computer geek, so the steps are really practical to improve your workflow. I'm not a pro - just an amateur. But with my digital SLR, it's not unusual to generate 200 - 300 images at a shoot. Scott Kelby's tips on improving workflow are awesome. Further, using Lightroom with the tips from this book will make me a better photographer.

The entire book is beautifully printed in color! It is divided in to very manageable sections, making it a breeze to use. If you want to learn Lightroom, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies

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Author: Lee Varis


Editorial Reviews

Review
A Hollywood photoillustrator with 30 years of experience, Varis has been published in National Geographic, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines. Far from a manual on fashion or nude photography, this is a comprehensive tutorial on how to photograph all types of people: young, old, and dozens of ethnic varieties. Varis supplements the book with a CD of numerous before-and-after sample image files and technical reference materials. He begins with a discussion of the right hardware and software and how to configure them, then teaches digital color management and lighting techniques as they apply to portraiture. He also provides in-depth chapters on retouching and special effects, including such techniques as skin smoothing, beauty retouching, screen diffusion, and depth of field effects. Highly recommended for serious students. (Library Journal, March 15, 2007)

Book Description
Achieving accurate skin tones is one of the most challenging tasks in digital photography. Master this challenge with professional photographer Lee Varis as he covers a range of skin: women and men, young and old, various tones, in-studio and outdoors, tattoos, and more. His step-by-step tutorials and before-and-after illustrations demonstrate various techniques for topics such as digital-specific lighting challenges and what can and cannot be done in post-process.
A free CD-ROM accompanies the book and contains sample image files to use while following the tutorials, plus equipment recommendations and technical reference materials that enhance and reinforce the instruction.

Order your copy of this practical guide today and get a complete start-to-finish approach to integrating everything from posing models to shooting and retouching candid scenes.

From the Back Cover
A practical guide to photographing people in the digital age
It's one thing to snap someone's picture. It's another thing entirely to capture the essence that made you reach for your camera in the first place. Now a top Hollywood pro shares his secrets for the digital capture of human skin in all its variety: young, old, male, female, different skin tones and ethnicities, with makeup or without—even tattooed skin!

Using step-by-step tutorials and stunning full-color examples, industry expert Lee Varis teaches it all: the basics of digital imaging, essential tricks to shooting indoors and out, how to light your subjects in any pose, and much more. Above all, you'll find out why the color of skin that's best for final output is almost always a departure from reality.

Topics include:

• Starting with the right hardware and software settings
• Developing your digital color "chops"
• Mastering Rembrandt lighting and other basic techniques
• Overcoming common digital skin problems, such as too much red
• Adjusting skin tones to withstand nearby colors like green grass
• Faking tattoos and photographing the real thing
• Trimming the fat, lighting up the eyes, and filling in wrinkles
• Adding soft focus, retouching, and other advanced Photoshop® techniques
• Discovering what can and what can't be done in post-process

Follow the tutorials in the book with numerous before-and-after sample image files on the companion CD. You'll also find technical reference materials to enhance and reinforce your learning.

• Know how to soften wrinkles and change shapes—and when not to!
• Beautifully color-balance every skin tone
• Brilliantly light any number of subjects in any location

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Sybex; Pap/Cdr edition (October 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 047004733X
• ISBN-13: 978-0470047330
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.8 x 1.1 inches
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,501 in Books

Customer Reviews
48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
Provocative, December 1, 2006
By Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA)
It probably says more about me than the book that I found a title which applies to something that surrounds every person provocative. However, it's likely that advanced Photoshop users will find something provocative in this book

The book is aimed at photographers who know the basics of photography, including exposure, and the use of Photoshop including layers and masks. The author's emphasis is on portraits and people photography and how to get the most from photographs of these subjects. Although the author spends a little time looking at hardware like digital cameras and at basic portrait lighting techniques, his main concern is with post processing.

The author's stated aim is to fill the gaps left by other books, like the reproduction of dark skin. And he does this in many ways that I haven't seen before. For example he suggests better skin colors can be achieved by looking at the CMYK readings and applying a rule of thumb. (If you don't know what CMYK is, this book isn't for you.) Varis suggests that for Caucasians magenta and yellow should be of approximately equal value, with cyan a fourth to a third of the value. Images of African Americans should have a higher percentage of cyan and magenta. He then tells you how to make these adjustments. He also shows how to make tone and contrast adjustments for both color and black-and=white images.

The author devotes a chapter to retouching, showing the reader how to ease those wrinkles and even do a little tummy tuck in Photoshop. He also devotes space to special effects, but he emphasizes alteration of the image not to tell lies, so much as to give effect to the photographer's vision. There is also a chapter on preparing output for print.

Most of the techniques that Varis shows are attempts at improvements on simpler Photoshop techniques. For example in the chapter on preparing for printing, he describes a method of improving on the usual unsharp mask sharpening. He does this by adding two additional layers that allow individual control of the prominence of the light halos and the dark halos that are the essence of unsharp mask.

Application of these techniques requires effort above and beyond normal Photoshop processing. How useful they will be depends on the amount of work you are willing to invest in an image, although most of the techniques could certainly be embedded in actions. Equally important is the question of your own ability to envision when to employ a particular technique to improve your work. An alternate consideration might be your willingness to experiment with several techniques to see which will benefit you.

The book includes a CD with the images used as examples in the book. I recommend that you read chapter 9 of the book which discusses these images before any other chapter. Then unzip the folders they come in into a new folder and follow along with the book. Often the changes are subtle and more easily seen on a monitor as they are made than on the printed page.

In summary, this is a book for the experienced Photoshop user, willing to spend the time examining techniques that might enable one to get that slight edge in his or her photographs that would put one ahead of other digital photographers.

34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
One of the four best Photoshop books I know of, January 12, 2007
By Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA)
Lee Varis has written a superb treatise - and that's what it is - on "digitally lighting, photographing, and retouching faces and bodies". He joins a short list of Katrin Eismann and Steve Caplain as the best teachers of Photoshop I am aware of.

Eismann has written books on retouching and masking that are absolutely essential. Caplain has written the bible on Photoshop montage. Varis has written the last word on on photographing people in the digital age.

One aside: all three of these authors are to be thanked for not attempting to be comedians along the lines of Scott Kelby, Deke McClelland and Russell Brown. Where this business of Photoshop authors trying to be "funny" started is unknown, but it is a ghastly thing when the author truly isn't funny.

Anyway, Varis covers the waterfront here, when it comes to photographing people. Everything. Color. Lighting. Correction. Retouching. Printing. In all, this book is about making the most of the people you photograph.

Profusely illustrated, Varis takes the reader step-by-step through each and every process.

There are a lot of Photoshop books out there, but few truly great ones. This is one of the few.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Book of the Year for people shooters, December 18, 2006
By Gary Jean (Alexandria, Virginia)
Photo techniques books have a tendency to rehash things we've seen before. Not this book. It is chock full of stuff that I have never seen in print.

The "focus" of the book (in case you didn't guess) is human skin, and the difficulties of digital capture, development, retouching and preparing for output.

Varis provides an explanation for the tendency of digital sensors to over-emphasize the red component of skin color. Better yet, he provides several techniques to effectively deal with the problem.

One way is a new camera calibration technique that uses a Macbeth color checker and Adobe Camera Raw. What's new about that? His method uses hue and saturation adjustments, which coincide with the adjustment sliders in the calibration tab of ACR. This is quite different, and potentially much easier, than Bruce Fraser's method (Real World Adobe Camera Raw), which requires a series of trial and error RGB adjustments.

Varis points out that "correct" RGB calibration may still have the "skin" block of the Macbeth color checker too red. He offers an alternative calibration that gives "correct" skin color, but may move the red block toward yellow. No free lunches. However, both calibrations can be saved in ACR and selectively used depending on subject matter.

Varis also presents skin correction techniques using Photoshop CS2 Hue-Saturation-Lightness layers. This is another straightforward and effective tool that I have never seen in print.

Varis writes for the professional and assumes some proficiency in Photoshop. However, there is much for the advanced amateur in his book.

Highly recommended!

Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual

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Author: Barbara Brundage

Editorial Reviews

With Photoshop Elements 6, the most popular photo-editing program on Earth just keeps getting better. It’s perfect for scrapbooking, email-ready slideshows, Web galleries, you name it. But knowing what to do and when is tricky. That’s why our Missing Manual is the bestselling book on the topic. This fully revised guide explains not only how the tools and commands work, but when to use them.

Photoshop Elements 6 is packed with new features. You get a new Quick Edit function, Windows Vista compatibility, improved RAW conversion, a handy Quick Selection Tool, and more. In fact, there’s so much to the latest version that it can be quite confusing at times. Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual carefully explains every feature the program has to offer by putting each one into a clear, easy-to-understand context –something no other book does!

• Learn to import, organize, and fix photos quickly and easily.
• Repair and restore old and damaged photos, and retouch any image.
• Jazz up your pictures with dozens of filters, frames, and special effects.
• Learn which tools the pros use — you’ll finally understand how layers work
• Create collages and photo layout pages for greeting cards and other projects.
• Get downloadable practice images and try new tricks right away.

This guide progresses from simple to complex features, but if you’re ready for the more sophisticated tools, you can easily jump around to learn specific techniques. As always, author Barbara Brundage lets you know which Elements features work well, which don’t, and why — all with a bit of wit and good humor.

Don’t hesitate. Dive into Adobe’s outstanding photo editor with Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual right away.

Product Details

• Paperback: 586 pages
• Publisher: OReilly (2 Nov 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596514441
• ISBN-13: 978-0596514440
• Product Dimensions: 22.9 x 17.8 x 4.1 cm
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #505 in Books

Customer Reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
A must have for photoshop users!!, November 15, 2007
By J. Cecil (California, USA)

I am new to photoshop, and recently bought the new Elements 6. I was looking for a book to help with digital scrapbooking in elements, and found this. It is not specifically for scrapbookng, but I have found everything I needed quickly and easily! It is a fantastic book, written in easy to understand format. I have already recommended it to other friends both new and old to photoshop. MUST HAVE!!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
The Missing Manual Photoshop Elements 6 is a must buy., November 25, 2007
By David Shapiro (Pine Knoll Shores, NC USA)

The Missing Manual has filled in the gaps that you miss when reading the book thats included with the product. This manual has helped me understand Digital Photography at the pro level. Now I know not only theory but also when and why I must do things.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
money well spent, November 23, 2007
By --pat (in OR for the summer)

It's nice to have this book to grab, now that I'm starting at the very beginning with PE. I think it could be twice as long and still not do the software justice. I was trying to figure out how to take an existing photos directory that has many subdirectories and convert it to a PE catalog. This book isn't clear enough on the organization features. But it's a whole lot better than the nothing that comes with the software.