Rating: 
Summary: The best photoshop color correction book I've ever reviewed!
Review: The image you capture with your camera doesn't have to be the image you share with others. Poor lighting, incorrect exposure, and washed-out colors can ruin a good photograph, but modern editing software-namely Photoshop-can save an otherwise hopeless image.Photoshop makes it easy to produce great-looking images full of detail and vibrant color, even when the original image is fuzzy and bland. Color expert Michael Kieran calls Photoshop Color Correction a distillation of 10 years' worth of hard-earned knowledge in the field of color correction and color management. In it, he shows you how to improve the detail, color balance, and sharpness of any photograph, regardless of its source, by applying color improvements you can see on both the computer screen and in print. This book gives an overview of the fundamentals of printing and color theory, and the whys and hows of calibration and color management. You'll learn practical techniques, presented in simple language-how to give the most important areas of an image an extra dose of detail by careful control of Photoshop's curves feature; how unsharp masking can bring images into focus; when to vary the black generation setting and what that means for printing and color correction; how to hold shadow detail; how to manage the Photoshop's separation settings; and more. High quality color doesn't just happen; sometimes it requires a great deal of work. Photoshop Color Correction demystifies the issues surrounding the tonal structure of images and helps you build an impressive repertoire of skills for analyzing and correcting color. You'll learn step-by-step processes for engineering great color in your photographs and enhancing color, clarity, and contrast. A companion CD-ROM contains low-resolution versions of the sample images in the book that illustrate the possibilities of color correction using Photoshop tools. This book teaches such essentials as:
* establishing proper highlight and shadow tones
* keeping neutral tones neutral
* adjusting sharpness to an appropriate level
* understanding various color model Not convinced yet? Give it a try, you won't regret buying this book. I didn't!
Rating: 
Summary: Too many errata!
Review: The information in this book is valuable. Without the numerous editing mistakes, the book would receive five stars. But the material is frustrating to follow because I can't help wondering if the material I am studying has another typo or another mislabeled or misplaced caption. I have been unable to find a list of errata from the publisher or author. That would help significantly.
Rating:
Summary: Too many errata!
Review: The information in this book is valuable. Without the numerous editing mistakes, the book would receive five stars. But the material is frustrating to follow because I can't help wondering if the material I am studying has another typo or another mislabeled or misplaced caption. I have been unable to find a list of errata from the publisher or author. That would help significantly.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Presentation
Review: There are many books on photoshop techniques that are of interest specifically to the photographer (Martin Evening's fine book for example, or Katrin Eismann's great book for v6), but I have seen none that cover the breadth of material in Kieran's book, or have as much depth. Color correction can be an exceedingly difficult thing to do correctly, even for experienced photoshop users; with Keiran's step-by-step tutorials and many image samples, the reader is soon equipped to tacked rather difficult problem shots. Many other topics such as sharpening and printing are also covered, of course. Along with with Barry Haynes' Photoshop Artistry (v6 or v7) and the books I mentionend above, Kieran's Photoshop Color Correction has quickly become a welcome addition to my central core of indispensible photoshop guides. If you are a photographer and use photoshop, you NEED this book!
Rating:
Summary: Some excellent material, but
Review: There is some excellent material in this book, and if you read the book and follow the examples you'll know a heckuva lot more about Photoshop color correction than you did when you started.
So why not five stars?
I subtracted one for the totally unacceptable number of errors in the book, a flaw mentioned by several other reviewers. This book badly needed a technical editor - if it had one, he/she should be fired.
I subtracted another because although the book is very strong on working with CMYK images, for some (not all) techniques it glosses over RGB correction.
I would have subtracted another half star for the poor quality of the images on the CD, were that possible.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of cool correction techniques!
Review: What I liked about this color correction book over the other leading one (Dan Somebody's "Professional Photoshop") is that this one is RGB centeric. There's correction examples done in CMYK and Lab, but RGB correction is considered by the author to be the master working space -and rightly so, well at least for me with RGB sources and RGB output. It's important to understand that this is not a beginner book, nor even an intermediate level user book, it'd be best for someone who is already very good at using photoshop, but wants to know more specifically about color correcting photographs. There are some wonderful techniques in this book for mixing channels, and luminosity and cool contrast tricks. There's a good chapter on sharpening too. My problem with the book was with the included CD, the images are way too low rez to even bother working on. It's best to use your own images anyway, but there are times when I would liked to have tried his example (and sometimes the example image isn't even present on the CD). But don't let the worthless CD discourage you from the book, which was otherwise very informative.
Rating: 
Summary: Photoshop Color Correction
Review: While a very fine book for the technically knowledgeable, this book could be considered something of a failure for someone venturing into unknown territory. That is to say, someone without a knowledge of "working spaces," "ICC profiling" or other "insider" knowledge of graphics programs.
It assumes a familiarity with terms without explaining them well.
For example, there is a complete lack of explanation as to why one would wish to change a profile coming from a digital camera into another profile which is more favorable for printing images from an inkjet printer. Similar situations appear throughout the book (the section on curves will leave a body cross-eyed).
This is an 'instruction' manual for those functioning at the intermediate/advanced level, but it in no way 'teaches' one how to use Photoshop or why a certain step should be taken, so there is no real sense of 'aha! That's why I should use this function instead of that one.' A person can get lost in the dialogue, which is more apt to satisfy color professionals than John Q Public, who simply wants to learn how to use Photoshop for color correcting without a primer course under their belt.
Not recommended for anyone with an IQ under 150 -- unless you wants wrinkles on your forehead from consternation.
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