Customer Reviews

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Martin Evening - a professional photographer - has been on the Lightroom team since its very start as 'Shadowland'. That expertise, presented with smooth writing and a light touch of humor, lifts the LR3 book to king-of-the-hill reference source status. Want to understand the CR-cache and its optimal size for speedy workflow? Do you wish to squeeze the last drop from the expanded tone curve? Here is the place to go! The 650-page book is attractively laid out, and printed on top quality paper so as to show subtle changes in before-and-after images. It is almost totally rewritten with loving (and time-consuming) care, continuing with, and expanding on, the previous two books

This book is aimed at mid-level Lightroom users (preferably with modest familiarity with the basics) who want to sharpen their skills, get answers about the pro's and con's of the 64-bit environment, or gain insight into the under-the-hood why, what and how of the software. The book is equally useful to Window or Mac users, clearly illustrated with screen shots of pertinent settings where the operating systems part ways (as in the file system).

Although the author takes a valiant stab at familiaring newbies with the essentials, the very depth of the book (eg, 5 pages on tethered camera shooting) may be a bit overwhelming for a second chapter; reference to an advanced chapter addressing tethered camera imports would have eased that sense of being out of your depth.

In short: THE ultimate reference guide to Lightroom 3; newbies might feel a bit intimidated by the detail - modest comfort with the software helps you in getting the most out of this book. Well worth the price.

Looking at the half dozen or so reviews I currently see in the review pages for this book, I'd have to say that I agree with them all. Unequivocally, this is neither a quick 'how to' book, nor is it for 'Dummies', 'Idiots' or other time challenged people. What you do get is a superb description of what and why, as well as the how. I found this to be a little bit frustrating initially (when you want to get something done in software, you want to get it done, now, don't you) but I soon came to appreciate the depth and knowledge afforded by Martin Evening's expertise. Yes, it's harder work, but it's probably more fulfilling for all of that. If you do need a quick guide, rather than a reference, then this book may not be for you, but if you can invest more time, then you will be rewarded with the knowledge of one of the great experts in the field. I can understand why this book may not fulfil some people's needs, but I can't see this book as anything other than a true 5 stars.

I am only one month into using Lightroom, and this book is definitely a big help in making sense of it all. The program has many, many capabilities that I probably would never have discovered or even known to look for. The author is an excellent photographer himself, and the book is full of large, bright photos of his that are a giant help in understanding his comments and suggestions.

This is no quick read, as it is jam-packed with not only step-by-step instructions but also all of the detail one could ever digest about how and why things work the way they do. Prepare to take good notes as you read, unless you have a 200 GB brain.

Frankly, until version 3 Lightroom was no match - from my point of view - for Capture NX 2 from Nikon. As Nikon user, I got the best quality for my RAW files out of NX2 and previous LR versions simply were not up to NX2's color accuracy, sharpness and overall IQ. However, NX2 has a very serious flaw, its limited catalog management features that I hope Nikon will address in its future releases. Also, performance-wise in speed dragged behind previous versions of LR.

When Adobe announced the third version of Lightroom 3 software I gave it one more try. Huge difference ! With inclusion of camera profiles and a better RAW engine, differences between NX2 and this software are now minimal. So I bought it and used ever since because of better speed and catalog management features that makes it invaluable IMO. One drawback: a slight magenta cast thrown in shadows, but this is easily corrected via camera profiling (read on).

However, with power comes no-knowledge so I had to get myself some reference reading. Thus I bought this book some months ago and now, after I have finised reading it in detail, I think a proper review is mandatory. This is a perfect companion for your Lightroom steps, so I recommend it within my heart.

The book is dedicated to Bruce Fraser and I was impressed by the quality of the content within the 649 pages (print- and information-wise). The book does not come with a DVD, but is full of valuable examples, workflows, commented processing steps and updated content for Lightroom 3.

Content in brief:

1. Introducing Adobe Photoshop Lightroom; in this chapter you will learn about the design and structure of the software and its purposes. After a brief discussion on its place in the workflow (integration with PS), the author describes the prerequisites for installation, detailed installation guide, description of the interface and a quickstart guide to Lightroom; this chapter covers 41 pages;

2. Importing photos; This chapters spans over 45 pages; you will be briefly introduced to the source media for your imported photos: how to import from cards, how to copy as DNG, how to use copy, move, add functions and the differences between them. Then, the author describes in detail the import dialog screen: source panel, content area, destinations, file handling etc. Much appreciated are some personal advices from author's own experience regarding storing imported photos. Then, the author discussed the DNG conversion procedures and interfaces, and updating DNG; adding photos from folders to catalog, importing via drag and drop, importing to a selected folder, importing video files, auto imports and importing directly from the camera using tethered shooting are some final considerations in this chapter. Finally, the author describes organization of the images and image management by metadata.

3. Navigating the Library module; This chapter dissects the Library module of the application; sections: module panels, exploring the library module, lightroom previews, working in survey view (compare images), navigating photos via filmstrip and working with dual-display setup. Image ratings using picks, rejects, stars, color labels is the content of the next section of the chapter; finally, 17 pages are dedicated to filtering images in the library (criteria for selective display and search).

4. Managing photos in the Library module; This chapter has 88 pages and is focused on metadata and filtering images; the metadata panes, EXIF, IPTC, custom information metadata, how to edit this info and keywording are the section of metadata part; description of the filter bar, searches, attribute, metadata and custom filter searching, and collections are the sections of filtering part. Finally, the author provides some extra tips for advanced users (audio file playback, GPS metadata and embedding GPS metadata).

5. Working with catalogs; In 30 pages the author describes main topics concerning catalogs and working with catalogs. Topics like creating, opening, exporting, copying and merging catalogs are main subjects of this chapter. A discussion concerning relationship between catalogs and actual folders is provided in the end of the chapter.

6. Develop module image editing; This is basically the "postprocessing" part of the book. The most important IQ-wise and the part you should pay most attention. The chapter spans over not less than 160 pages and includes: steps for getting accurate color; quick develop panel and quick develop steps; the develop module interface and shortcuts (cropping, histograms, wb, vibrance and saturation, HSL, lens corrections, camera calibration etc); pages 340-348 provide a detailed description about creation and usage of camera profiles. This chapter is full of step-by-step approaches in image pp with practical examples and guides and many hints from author's own experience.

7. The art of black and white; A chapter dedicated to BW conversions; 26 pages; BW develop controls, temperature sliders, auto BW and fine-tuning BW images are some subjects from this chapter.

8. Sharpening and noise reduction; Not surprisingly, the author provides a separate chapter for this two important subjects. 28 pages; After a description of the differences and improvements in raw image processor in Lightroom 3, various sharpening techniques are discussed (presets, luminance targeted sharpening, supression techniques, masking and noise reduction).

9. The Photoshop connection; This is a chapter dedicated to interaction between Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop: opening images in PS, extended editing in PS, exporting from LR (presets, locations, file naming, settings, image sizing, output sharpening, metadata and watermarking) also adding export actions in LR and a quick discussion on export plugin -- all make the core of this chapter.

10. Printing; 40 pages; topics: the print module, layout style panel, image settings panel, multiple cell printing and picture packages, page setup and print resolution, prin job panel and 16-bit output. Moreover there is a discussion on custom profile printing that I find valuable for those that have issues with usage of custom printer profiles (pages 535-539) and saving settings as custom templates.

11. Presenting your work; This chapter spans over 58 pages and deals with creating slideshows and web pages with LR artwork.

Finally, the book has two appendixes: A - that contain LR preferences and B - that contain all LR settings.
The book is printed in full color on a very good quality paper. I warmly recommend this to anyone interested in integrating LR in own processing workflow.
Excellent book.

Warmest regards.

Martin Evenings Lightroom books are excellent sources of information, but they are not for the easily intimidated. The books, including this one, are very technical but accessible. They are not a step by step, here's how this is done type of book. This is a reference for those who want to truly understand what is going on in the program and want to learn not only the how but the why of things. If you're familiar with the program and want to understand what you're doing, then I highly recommend this book. If you just want to be told how to do things in a step by step format, then Scott Kelby's book might be more to your liking.

I buy Evening's books on Lightroom and Photoshop every time a new edition of either product comes out. His books are encyclopedic and sometimes you get more than you need or want which can be confusing. Scott Kelby's books are better as an introduction, and he covers most of the essential stuff in a much more digestible way. Still I return to Evening's book sometimes for a more detailed view. It's a useful book, but more than the average Lightroom user needs, or, I suspect, wants.

This book is an incredible value. I'd purchased Lightroom 3 to replace my Photoshop Elements 7, and I was completely lost trying to do anything. While I'm still no expert, I can work confidently in Lightroom 3 now, without feeling like I'm always on the edge of a disaster. As other folks have pointed out, this isn't a "hand holding" book. The writing is clear, coverage is thorough, and a lot of detail on "why", rather than "move slider to 75". I have more Lightroom books, but this is by far the best.

Since so many others have gone into great detail about this LR 3 reference book, I'll make this short:

The book can often be, and is, somewhat confusing; and I say this as a photographer who's been working with Photoshop since Version 1.0 (1990) and has been working with digital cameras since the days of the Kodak DCS 520 ... a 2MP behemoth that cost $25,000 when it was first released. So I'm not a novice when it comes to working with things digital. But this book has made me feel like I am. Why? I think the main culprit is that a few important things are left out and a lot of things are out of sequence. Setting up your computer for handling LR 3 is at the end of the book! Does that make sense? The section on Auto Import doesn't mention that you have to set up Auto Import before you actually import the images from that particular folder or source. If you try to set up Auto Import after importing, no go. Doesn't work that way. I found this out upon loading over 100,000 images! I had to start all over again because Auto Import is important to me.

So it's things like that that prompt me to give it 4 stars instead of 5. Plus, reading this book makes me feel like I've gone back to college; like I'm studying for an exam the next day. It's very intense and requires reading the same text over and over before you can commit a how-to section to memory. It presents a steep learning curve ... and perhaps it should. LR 3 is a big, bold, complicated and immensely useful program, probably the best of its kind, which is why I use it. I bought Mr. Evening's book because I wanted to absolutely make the most of this application. I wanted to reduce my browsing, search and processing time to a minimum, and this book has certainly helped me do that. But it does take me through some unnecessary (in my opinion) twists, turns and dead ends.

Still in all, it's worth buying and having and I've learned a lot.

This is a well-written and very thorough book on Lightroom 3. It is too complete to use as a quick getting started guide; for example, it starts with a chapter on importing photos which is over thirty pages long, and discussion of development (photo editing) does not begin until page 243. But, having learned the rudiments elsewhere and having started using Lightroom 3 seriously, I find it instructive to read the book straight through. I am very glad I have this book.

This is an amazingly comprehensive, book, with lots of depth into virtually every aspect of lightroom 3. In fact, it would be longer if the font size were a normal size. I find it a bit small, but readable. This book kind of reminds me of that quote "I'm sorry my letter is so long, I did not have time to make it shorter." At any rate, I've learned a lot from it, but I would not say the process is short. Perhaps it would be better to pick one's areas of interest and just go to that part of the book, instead of reading it from beginning to end as I did.

One minor nit. The author is a big fan of adobe's DNG format. I think that is a complex issue on which the jury is still out.

Brad