[.ca] Digital Photography: Expert Techniques: Professional ... (ISBN 0596005474)

Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, 2nd Ed:
The author gives a lot of useful information for optimizing digital photographs. I found that the author assumes that the reader has Adobe Photoshop CS2 (which I don't) and that the reader already has some idea of the concepts involved with taking digital photographs. The book covers pretty well most things that a person will need to deal with such as the necessary computer hardware, image processing to eke out image quality both on a global scale (e.g. white balancing) and on localized changes (e.g. touching up facial blemishes), right to calibrating a printer. One thing that was a bit annoying was the fact that the author introduces concepts without first explaining them. For example, the use of layers is mentioned in early chapters without really explaining what they're about. Then chapter 5 discusses them, without ever really explaining why they are used. Perhaps he has assumed that people are familiar with CS2 already. Another point was the concept of workflows. The term is used without really explaining what it is. Overall, the book does a pretty good job providing expert techniques for digital photography. To get most benefit from the book, a reader should have Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Above and beyond the typical digital photography book:
There are many books available explaining how to make the most of Photoshop or how to get everything you can out of your digital camera. While this book goes into some of these topics, it goes a step further by looking at it from the point of view of a professional photographer. This insight is particularly welcome, which shifts the focus of the book from knowing how to use Photoshop to how to be a better photographer. The author takes the professional photographer's perspective (although this book can really be read and enjoyed by anyone serious about digital photography), which includes discussing issues such as storage, cataloging, CCD basics, and software. The author discusses some of his file naming techniques, shows some of the tools he uses, and provides recommendations for camera purchases. Rather than simply rehashing the same Photoshop tricks available in every other digital photography book, the author shows what professional photographers do (bracketing photographs) as well as different software that might be better suited for a specific task (stitching software to combine many individual photographs into one large image). Naturally, many other image manipulations are discussed, however, the central point of the discussions are always how to make a better photograph. I found discussions that focused on the photograph rather than the software tool very refreshing and quite interesting and useful. The author wraps up the book by providing some ideas on how to break into the business as a professional photographer. There is a discussion on printing photographs and how to create some beginning marketing materials. In all of these discussions, the focus remains on the photograph. I enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to individuals interested in a book that gives you more than the rest of the digital photography books out there.

Finally, an O'Reily quality digital photography editing book:
I like this book a lot. It brings O'Reilly's quality in research and editing to digital photography books. They spent some time on it, and it shows. The example photos are excellent and clearly demonstrate the points. The book is well organized, and has lots of handy tips. Chapter nine, on touching up photos, is particularly good, going through common photo problems and then applying fixes to them digitally. On the downside, the book is mainly about windows, and it spends much more time talking about digital editing and touch-up then it does in getting a good picture in the first place, which is 90% of the battle. Even with the downside this book is still well worth the price for amateurs looking to get heavily into digital photography.

Digtial Techniques:
This book covers both the Mac world and the PC world. Since I use both systems it was great for me. I am a function/short cut key addict and this book certainly delivered in that area. It would list the command in Mac language first then PC talk. This book might be a bit advanced for the first time Photoshop user a good recommendation before embarking on this book would probably be Deke McClelland, "Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One". This book is definitely designed more for Photoshop CS but users of Photoshop 5.5, 6 and 7 should have no problems. The layout style was pretty easy and logical to follow. You start with the basics like what equipment would best suit your needs, etc. It explained a bit about the difference between film and digital cameras in terms of the focal length and magnification that occurs with digital cameras. Followed by how to get great images in the field, plus taking care of your equipment and other practical information. Along the way it would discuss strategies about when to use a particular filter or effect. Sometimes it's best to get the color correction and other assorted manipulations out of the way before you use some of the filters. While this book primarily covers Photoshop it does discuss other programs and plug-ins like Corel KnockOut, nik Color Efex, KPT Collection plus many more that create some of the same effects found in Photoshop but without the steep learning curve. The full color photo samples and easy to follow steps made this book just great to read. The helpful tips and expert advice really had some great useful information. They would show you the original, the adjusted image and sometimes and over adjusted image so you could really get an idea as to the point that they were making. Sometimes you look at a photo and it looks good but it lacks something kind of subtle. They showed what some of those subtle changes could be to lend your image more punch. More of a professional edge. So you could have an image that was O.K. add some of these effects and get a pretty knockout photo. This book certainly got my creative juices flowing. I have some landscapes and flowers that have been sitting in my to do something with box while I wait for inspiration to hit me. It did after this book. I have to admit it was a bit overwhelming with all of the choices with the different plug-ins and third party applications besides Photoshop that are out there. So I'm just going to take a few of the tips and start using them on my photos and adding more and more as time goes on. This book will be very well sticky noted by the time I add all of the new tricks to my little but soon to be big bag of tricks.

Beautiful book, and excellent techniques...:
O'Reilly has a book out called Digital Photography Expert Techniques by Ken Milburn. If you're ready to take your digital photography to the next level (close to professional grade), this is a book you'll want to see. First off, the chapter contents: The Digital Photographer; Be Prepared; Bringing Out The Best Picture; Panoramas; Photoshop Selections, Masks, and Paths; Basic Digital Photo Corrections; Converting Photos to Paintings; Special Photographic Effects; Retouching and Rescuing Photos; Creating Fictitious Photos; Color Printing; Use Pictures to Sell Yourself; Sell It on the Web This book targets the professional, or serious, digital photographer who is using an SLR digital camera with at least six megapixels and plenty of memory. It also assumes the use of Photoshop as the base editing tool for manipulating the images. But rather than stick with Photoshop as the only tool, the author will also educate you on other tools or plug-ins that will give spectacular results beyond what you could get by sticking with the base software. Another target for this book is the film photographer who wants to move to the digital realm, but doesn't quite know how best to set up the workflow of processing images. Because a digital photograph can take many forms after image enhancement, there are a number of good ideas here to help you know what to save and what to delete. Each chapter is made up of a series of "tips" on how to do something interesting with your images or with your camera. For instance, in the retouching chapter, you'll find tips with the following titles: Restore Youth; Remove Stains; Eliminate Junk from the Landscape; Cosmetic Emphasis; Focus the Light on Points of Interest; Punch Out the Paunch; Proboscis Pruning and Changing Expressions; and Clone Detail from Another Photo. Each tip or technique is well documented as to the steps necessary in the software to accomplish the effect. He also usually shows before and after full-color comparisons so that you can visually grasp how the effect works and how you can use it in your own work. Now, if you're like me, puttering around in the consumer world of digital cameras, you can still get some great ideas from this book. The tips on composition, image correction, and other basic skills are valid regardless of what level you're at. Your final result may not be quite as good as his due to not having an original image of the same resolution, but you can still end up with some stunning shots that will wow your friends. Bottom line... quality information, well written, beautiful book that should be considered by any serious digital photographer.