Rating: 
Summary: An Enduring Book
Review: So you've gone and spent some time learning the intricacies of Photoshop. Does that knowledge and your digital camera make you an expert on digital photography? Probably not!It is true that for digital photography, Photoshop is the standard, and knowledge of it is necessary. But not sufficient. This, basically, is the motivator of Milburn's book. He assumes you're conversant with the mechanics of Photoshop. But now that you have that down, his book concentrates on higher level skills. He has acquired these over 20 years as a digital photographer, from back when tools were totally primitive. The book is replete with tips on image composition. In the process, you learn to appreciate and use many perhaps hitherto obscure capabilities of Photoshop. Like being able to reduce noise in JPEGs. Or precise edge sharpening. Or painting with filters. And so on. Chances are that an introductory Photoshop book may have given these only cursory attention. Most Photoshop books are the equivalent of books on grammar and syntax. This book is about writing essays. The book is also a fun read. The visuals are dazzling! Printed on high quality glossy paper that will still be as fresh decades from now. Deliberately so. There is a timeless quality about the book. Its techniques will still be applicable years hence. Future versions of Photoshop will have at least the capabilities of the current Photoshop. And even if Photoshop gets supplanted by another product, that will be a superset of today's. Of course, there is no doubt that new techniques will be invented. And those will necessitate new texts. But digital photography is a mature enough field, as documented by this book, that it may endure.
Rating:
Summary: Above and beyond the typical digital photography book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Above and beyond the typical digital photography book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Digtial Techniques
Review: 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.
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