Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow Bible Review

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow Bible ReviewI'm a professional portrait photographer. I work both in-studio as well as on-location and I have used Photoshop intensively for 6 years and Lightroom since beta. That said, I am always open to learning new methods that can shave time off my workflow - the less time I spend at the computer, the more dollars per hour I make. This book has helped me to learn more about the programs that I use all day every day.
Now, trying to cover ALL of Lightroom and Photoshop in one (albeit full-to-the-brim) book is an impossible task. One has to choose what to cover in depth, and what to leave out. Fitzgerald has done a fantastic job of covering the critical components of the actual workflow without getting bogged down in (for instance) the minutiae of how to do eye enhancement retouching so as to bring out liquidity and presence.
All of us need to `hammer through' thousands of images, sorting, color-balancing, retouching a bit, cropping, etc.,, etc., etc., ad infinitum! And, all of us need to do this faster and smarter without dropping our guard on the finest end result we can create (which is what our clients pay for!) Fitzgerald gives you just the right amount of information so you can get up and running RIGHT NOW and start using the programs.
This book is a huge help in that. Fitzgerald covers the entire process from importing images to Lightroom through final printing out of Photoshop. As a portrait artist who specializes in enhancement retouching I have spent hundreds of hours studying and using Photoshop and Fitzgerald teaches me new stuff on darn near every page. I also simply love Lightroom (especially 2.1!) and Fitzgerald gives so many great little tips along the way I wonder how the heck he could find time to learn it all and write the book when LR2.0 was still in beta!
Caveat: this in NOT an absolutely thorough coverage of every little thing in either of the programs (for instance, color management gets a few pages here and there whereas Bruce Fraser wrote a whole book on it!), but, that said, it sure as heck will give you the groundwork that you require for getting your workflow up and running and for understanding the programs enough to really get good work done. Actually, I am very surprised at how well Fitzgerald did considering the scope of this book.
I wish the index was more thorough, but I wish that for every book (oh! for an on-line concordance for books!) And I wish there were full-tilt keyboard shortcut charts for both programs (but those can be found on-line, I suppose). The layout is a bit dense to my eye, but there is so much to cram in, I guess if it were less dense the book would be a brick.
Lastly, I have to say that I usually find that book writers do a poor job of keeping a teaching-flow going while writing, they jump around, they try and be too `cool' and get all cutesy, or they dive down long, dark rabbit holes and lose the reader. Fitzgerald is one of the best in-print teachers I have come across, and I read many books per month.
All in all: if you want to improve your bottom line by improving your workflow, buy it!Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow Bible Overview

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

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Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 ReviewThis book may be what you need, or it may actually drive you nuts, quite quickly. This depends on your skill level in photoshop, your personality, and your actual needs regarding photos (i.e., what you need them for). Since some of the reviews formerly posted here sound like something a company marketing team may write, a few clarifications may be in order before you purchase this book.
First, the somewhat misleading title: sure, SEVEN is a nice number with lots of ancient tradition (e.g., from seven deadly sins, and seven virtues to seven habits of highly successful people, etc.) Alas, there aren't just seven "points". It's more like SEVENTY.
Scott Kelby (as always very articulate and mercifully NOT trying to be too humorous this time) uses some very wide, general, and often COMPLEX concepts, and treats them as ONE "point" each. So, for example, one such point (among seven) is "use Adobe Camera RAW to make all appropriate / necessary adjustments" (I am paraphrasing here) - but that is hardly ONE point: it includes setting / adjusting white balance, exposure, white / black point, fussing with shadows, initial sharpening, clarity / vibrance, saturation, etc. Another example of such single "point" (among the seven) would be "painting with light": which sounds good and simple, but actually involves working with multiple adjustment layers, and creating numerous, often quite complex, variable density masks for localized adjustments - so much so, that some images wind up being a sandwich of more than four layers, each with its own masks, individual transparency settings, and blending modes - hardly "one simple point" again.
As a result, fixing many example photos turns out to be a LENGTHY process which often involves more than 20 steps, many of which are in turn complex, multi-step procedures that require both practice and skill (e.g., hand painting precise masks with brushes of progressively diminishing opacity, or using selection drawing tools). Needless to say, such level of precision is best implemented working with a tablet / stylus, and is going to be less-than-pleasant (and successful) using a mouse, a point which needs to be made clearly (and the book doesn't do it). If it is to be done right, it will also be time consuming.
Other issues further add to the above problem: some techniques (such as "faking" water reflections by flipping and blending the actual non-reflected image) will be seen as questionable by many serious photographers. If you ethically don't object to doing this type of "deep-pixel editing", then why not just composit-in a sky or other element taken from another, better-exposed photo altogether? Also, as one reviewer has mentioned previously, some procedures use settings that are arbitrary (7-7-7 for defining a black point when working with curves), and do not include a good explanation of the WHY of the processes involved.
Yet another issue is the fact, that such very heavy reliance on aggressive editing in ACR (especially since Kelby sometimes uses 8-bit jpg files in ACR and not 12-bit RAW) often winds up producing images that are "punchy" (or garish, depending on how you see it), but at the expense of unnatural-looking color shifts, posterization, and artefacts visible EVEN at the very small print sizes used in the book (under 2 inches?) - I encourage you to look at the example of a "before and after" on the p. 31. Would you really want your sunset/sunrise photos to look like that? Perhaps this may be acceptable for saving a one-of-a-kind, 4x6 shot for a family album, but I don't see it having much potential for anything else (e.g., 8x10 or a serious print). Yes, there definitely are many example photos that benefit greatly from the procedures outlined in the book, but that's mostly because many were GOOD (reasonably correctly exposed) photos to start with, and simply needed help to get rid of the characteristic "dull" / "flat" look so typical of baseline RAW files. Most also rely of Kelby's experience and intuition in deciding which steps (of the seven) to implement and which to skip in each case.
There is also a more serious, practical issue here: if you are going to spend several HOURS fixing one, not-very-good-quality photo, and repeat that lengthy (and eventually repetitive and boring) process with some frequency, wouldn't you be better off just spending A FEW hours ONCE to take a workshop with a good photographer, so that your BETTER photos do not need such convoluted and extensive "fixing" in post all the time?
To summarize: the book outlines some useful, if excessively complex techniques to fix (smaller) photos. Many of these techniques will not be feasible on photos meant for larger print sizes, unless a stylus, considerable time, patience for trial-and--error, and precision masking skills are used. For remedying of casual snapshots for a family album, many techniques presented here, although potentially useful, will be an overkill for most users. For professional users and serious advanced CS3 photo-amateurs, this book is too formulaic to be useful.
On the plus side, the book is well written, carefully edited, and has a generous amount of well-described screen shots and (small) "before-and-after" photos.Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 Overview

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Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3: A Photographer's Handbook Review

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Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3: A Photographer's Handbook ReviewThis book takes a different approach than other "Photoshop" books in that it addresses, fairly completely, all four Adobe products typically used by digital photographers: Photoshop CS5, Lightroom 3, camera raw and Bridge. It does this in a fully integrated progression from system configuration through work flow and printing. When more than one of these programs might be useful for a given task, all are covered so if you have both CS5 and lightroom, it will discuss how each could be used. Each page is clearly marked with the appropriate logo so you'll see which of these programs the page addresses. I don't use them all so it was easy to skip the pages that didn't apply.
It is designed as a standalone book that covers everything you need to know to get started w/ these programs. Given the breath of the coverage, it doesn't get too in-depth so it's best for beginner to intermediate users. While it covers the major new features of CS5, it doesn't cover them all - just the ones that could be part of a typical work flow. So less useful features, like "puppet warp", are skipped. It's not a "what's new in CS5" type book - it addresses the complete work flow and addresses the most used features, both old and new.
Overall, this is a very good review of these adobe products. If you have them all, it's one-stop-shopping. But even if you only use a few, you will find it easy to use and helpful.Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3: A Photographer's Handbook Overview

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