Customer Reviews

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

First the good, this book is very concise and to the point. I use the index to locate what I'm looking for and viola', a nice description that's to the point without a load of fill and fluff. I like this very much.

The bad: Ahhh... Black and white photos, are you kidding? When I buy a book with the Adobe trade mark on it I expect high quality "color" screen shots and photos, not Black and White. I didn't research this enough to know it was B&W, that's my fault.

I would have given this 2.5 stars if it were possible, the writing/instruction is good, the image design really needs to be reworked with sharper color images.

Experienced and intermediate Lightroom users will find this a great reference. It's an excellent support tool, topically organized, in the order of Lightroom's modules and tools. If you need help with a particular tool, like the new gradient filter, it's simple to go right to that section, without having to dig through the index. Also, each section gives me just enough to get going on my own, without a lot of extra verbiage, which might be fun to read, but it's becomes more time-consuming when you just need something quick. This was the first book available, and well priced. I'll probably get his Photoshop book, too, when the CS4 version becomes available.

I am literate with Photoshop and Illustrator but found a steep learning curve learning Lightroom. I read and studied Kelby's book "the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book for digital photographers" and found it lacked essential basic information (like what is a catalog and how that differs from files)though it did cover many subjects. This book "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques" by Chris Orwig answered 99% of my questions succinctly. It gave me a working, bread and butter, knowledge of how the program works, what it does that other programs don't, and why and how I should use it.
Now the negatives, only one. Lousy print quality. The examples are to small to see without a magnifying glass and everything is in black and white.
Would I recommend? Unequivocal Yes. Read it first and if you still have questions then buy Kelby's book. At least you'll have a foundation to use to start learning from Kelby....

I got my copy a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed working through from cover to cover.
The book is easy to read and has really gotten me up to speed in Lightroom 2 a heck of a lot faster than I expected!
I am familiar with Chris Orwig's Lynda.com video training materials and was curious to see if he could communicate in print with the same passion as he does in video.
Not only is the passion there but it is presented clearly and succinctly.
Totally worth the $$.

I just got my copy of the book this past weekend and already it has already paid for itself! As a new photographer, familar to other Adobe products but new to Lightroom this book is perfect. I find it is easy to simply flip around to the different sections, learn something new and can begin using it right away. Plus no long winded, how-to sections that you don't need or read anyway....
Adobe Lightroom is such a powerful tool and the more I learn the more impressed I am - and for me this book is now one of those essential for learning how to really use and get the most out of it.

The idea as such was possibly quite good: Provide a plethora of quick examples of how to achieve specific tasks in Lightroom. Execution is not to be recommended. Foremost, the book is in black and white. How in heaven should a reader understand fine adjustment of white balance and color from that?? Numerous fuzzy images are of a size of a post stamp, and to make things even worse, the print itself is of a questionable quality. One especially bizarre example caught my eye instantly: Curious to see if authors discuss some interesting details of noise reduction sliders, such as luminance versus color, I looked up their tip. They just tell to compare at 100% magnification, what is obvious from the manual anyways, and show two postage stamp sized pictures of "before and after," both looking identical uniform gray! I could go on and enumerate here several more of such "before and after" worthless smeared gray rectangles with meaningless "chunks of something."

Of all the books about photography which I have seen so far, this one gets the "most worthless" gold award. You have been warned.

As a collection of tips, this isn't bad - but it isn't very good either.

It is not a teaching manual: you will not learn how to use Lightroom2 using these "tips", though you may actually learn a few new techniques. Some of the tips are utterly useless, such as advising you how much RAM you need to run the program and that more is better.

The tips are typically short with oceans of white space around them. Illustrations - unbelievably - are in black and white, many of them tiny. Almost all are unusable for lack of detail and muddy printing.

Overall, the book is not without value - as I said, you can find some good tips on refining your Lightroom2 techniques. But as a tool for learning how to use Lightroom2, the book is largely useless and there are many better choices available.

Jerry

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 How-Tos: 100 Essential Techniques has very little real content. Most of the text is not to the point. The author tells too many stories and has very little to offer in terms of real how-to information. Kelby also fills his books with useless chit-chat (not to mention the silly jokes), but you can always learn a thing or two. This is not the case here. Maybe Classroom in a Book would be a better way to get started.

I bouth this and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers.

The other book is much better. It's actually a book with usefull information. This one is just a different way of organizing and repeating the information that is in the manual. It just explains the menus and funcions but does a lousy job at describing the effects and when to use each one, to what extent. If you read the original manual you will end up with the same info. I actuall have the impression there are parts of the book wich are copied from the adobe manual.

This book is not worth the money, get The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers instead.

Quick and to the point. Very helpful. I use it for post-processing wedding shots.