Professional Photoshop.: The Classic Guide to Color Correction [With CDROM]

I was a beta-reader of this book, and so have had a while to read and digest in draft form. This is a book about how to make photographs look better and more believable. In fact, I'd say it's the most authoritative work on the topic in existence. Scott Kilby calls Dan "the father of digital prepress". The National Association of Photoshop Professionals cites him as, "the most influential voice in color reproduction." Learn what Dan has to teach and you'll take a big step in the direction of producing more professional looking work. For those unfamiliar with Dan's work, reading this book is no small undertaking. Dan makes demands on his readers quite unlike other Photoshop authors. There are powerful recipes here, as there have always been in Dan's books. But there is much more for those willing to expend the effort: a deep understanding of what the recipes do and why and when they are appropriate. Absorbed at that level, the case studies in the book lead to a kind of mastery that transcends any collection of recipes. The recipes and workflow are an outgrowth of a coherent theory. Learn this and you'll be able to recreate Dan's techniques without memorizing them and be able to shape your own new techniques as needed. Andy Williams is the driving force behind the photography discussion board Dgrin and general manager of the photo sharing service SmugMug. Andy has described Dan's books as "making your eyes bleed". I'd say that "making your head explode" is a more accurate description of the reward for the diligent reader. In compensation for the difficulty of his topic and approach, Dan has a wonderfully lucid, learned, humorous, and entertaining writing style, which makes the prospect of an inevitable second reading much more palatable. For those already familiar with Professional Photoshop, this is a major rewrite from the 4th edition. Dan says it's 90% new. As is often the case with his claims, he has the data to back this one up. There are 142 base images in the new book, and 126 of these weren't in the previous edition. The text seems at least as fresh. There are entire areas here that weren't covered in the 4th edition. For example, there is a chapter about converting raw images with Adobe Camera Raw. There is an explanation of the shadow/highlight adjustment which didn't exist at the time the 4th edition was published. This last exists in a broader context of moves for improving shadow and highlight detail and making the best of the gamut available (for whatever output device.) Familiar topics get new treatment and more subtle approaches. There are now two chapters devoted to sharpening, a sensible explanation of how conventional USM differs from HIRALOAM (high radius low amount) sharpening, some guidelines for thinking about how each kind of sharpening helps particular kinds of images, and a new framework for combining the two techniques in the same image. RGB techniques, particularly curves are now given greater emphasis. In previous

I've had people tell me my portraits look like they were taken in a studio, or with a high-end digital camera. The fleshtones are smooth and warm and the lighting is flattering. It wasn't always that way. I use a standard point-and-shoot autofocus/autoflash compact digital camera, and I used to have problems with skin tones in my prints being too red or green or blue -- you name it. But three simple secrets turned my dud snapshots into professional-looking portraits: create visual angles when posing your subject, use a bounce flash off the ceiling, and apply the techniques in this book to color-correct your images before printing them. Correcting by the numbers is a sure-fire way to remove the bluish color cast caused by a digital camera flash or to make flat lighting more dramatic. These techniques will let you make the most out of every photo you take. Simply convert your photos to CMYK, apply the corrections, and convert back to RGB. By focusing on getting the numbers balanced, you'll get powerful results without resorting to guessing. I can vouch for it -- nobody who has seen my pictures has figured out I'm color-blind.

Unlike most Photoshop "how to" books, this one wastes no pages defining the use of tools and features. It assumes the reader is a competent photographer who is comfortable using digital imaging editing programs, and begins with the author's philosophical groundwork for image enhancement techniques. The book utilizes "all 10 channels" in the RGB, CMYK and LAB models as appropriate for analyzing and correcting images. This is a book that repays repeated study. Outstanding.

I walked into this book knowing nothing (at any level of detail) regarding printing and color theory (beyond high school art class, but definitely could not explain the details of RGB, CMYK, L*A*B, HSB or any other colorspace). The book is a bit heavy in parts, but if read carefully teaches even a newcomer amateur, such as myself, a few things. After reading this I feel that I better understand what I am doing in any program when "correcting" a photo. I read it the first time without really trying the examples. I am now going back and following through. The time you invest in reading, and rereading, this book clearly seems to be worth it. The corrections I have been able to do on my own photos improved drastically after reading just the first few paragraphs.Only comment, maybe it is just proof of my lack of professional training or experience, but I had a hard time noticing the difference in some of the before and afters. Most of the time I could see the difference.