Customer Reviews

AdobeCamera Raw: Studio Skills

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Unbelievable what Charlotte K Lowrie managed to realize with in my opinion the best book on the subject.She brings together eleven of the best widely known top photographers who share their techniques & tips with you to achieve your skills;
This wonderful illustrated book is a MUST on your bookshelf!!
The layout is fantastic,the photos beautiful and the tutorials from each of the specialist tremendous.
Camera Raw is taking back the control that photographers had in the black-and-white darkroom and "Studio Skills" brings you in the darkroom of this eleven gurus.What pleased me especially is that in 348 pages I could deal with the know-how from these artists.From Workflow and image evaluation(section 1 page 4-61)to Image processing techniques(section 2 page 66-268)to end with Add finishing touches in ps(section 3 page 276-295)all you ever wanted to achieve is explained.An overview of each photogapher-contributor(including Charlotte Lowrie)is given at the beginning of the book with his/her speciality,clients,career and the techniques they demonstrate in this book referencing the page where you can find them.Thanks to the editor's permission you can search inside the book this is a great advantage to make a decision before buying this bestseller!
An handy format,glossy paper,great photograps and above all extremely useful techniques(look at the resume above what's on the back-flap)

The appendix A explains in detail Adobe Bridge(page307-316)Appendix B Getting to know Camera Raw (page 317-329)Appendix C all about updates and downloading Camera Raw plug-in update(page 331-332)Appendix d a variety of professinal organizations offer support a selection by category(page 333-336)
Finally the advantage is that you'll deal with several"visions"from the best professinals on the stage!!!!!
Charlotte we 're asking for more books on this high level.

Adobe Camera Raw Studio Skills is a MUST for anyone using Adobe Photoshop. Charlotte Lowrie has assembled a host of great contributers, including herself, and has compiled a vast array of knowledge. The book is written in a very logical format, and covers just about everything you want or need to know about Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. The appendices at the back of the book include information about Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, How do download and install plug-ins for Camera Raw, and finally, websites for variety of professional organizations that can provide additional training and information. This book really does belong on any digital photographer's reference shelf.

This book is not at all aimed at novices or amateurs, but if you plan to put in enough time to justify your impressively-expensive software purchase, I would certainly recommend it to you, with some caveats.

Who is this review written by? An amateur and complete Photoshop novice, which does not mean that I'm not dedicated, deadly serious about properly learning my craft, or don't have things to say about this book that might be relevant to professionals. I have been using the book for a month now, have worked my way through it all, and have rarely started up Photoshop proper at all, except when following the exercises here. (An initial month spent properly learning only Bridge and Camera Raw is not remotely time wasted.)

The first problem I had with the book was that it didn't start with an overview of what Camera Raw is or does, and how it differs from Photoshop proper. I'd been slowly figuring it out, but it was not until p236 that I found a description of the differences: namely, the purpose of Raw is to prepare a properly-adjusted TIFF (or whatever) image for Photoshop proper; that changes made in Raw are lossless (you never lose the option to go back and do something differently), global in nature, affecting the whole image, and you have access to power that is not available in Photoshop, like rescuing an overexposed image by changing the actual exposure. (Round about the time of that revelation is when my wallet stopped hurting quite so much, and I quickly found and loaded my utterly-gorgeous blue-heron-shaking-sparkling-rainbow-droplets-off-itself photograph that had been too closely bracketed.)

(By the way: the technique that p236 goes on to describe: "Add Photoshop Masks and Adjustments to RAW Images", is alone worth the price of the book, because after it claims Camera RAW makes only global changes, it tells you how to make localized changes, then shows a dramatic example.) All the sections are short, but there are quite a few that are alone worth the price of the book. Doing HDR merging by working mostly within Bridge and Camera Raw gives incredible (and reversible!) flexibility, and sometimes simply stunning results.

But, problems. The book sections were written by eleven people who are no doubt all good photographers, but not all are good technical writers (which is my trade, so I notice). And it wasn't sewn together very well: it seriously needed another round of proofreading. I'm probably more sensitive than most, and none of the errors are bad enough to confuse the meaning of what is being said, but some are blatant nonetheless, like on p180: "Click the Color Sampler tool and click in a primary shadow area. Click the Color Sampler tool and move to a shadow area of the image."

The main problem I have with the book might be partly subjective: my eye might not be all that good, but I doubt that. The book is profusely illustrated with screenshots that show changes as the example moves along ... except that quite often they DON'T show changes. The screenshots are almost always-full-photo-with-histogram-and-menu-settings, which are all relevant, but many of the changes are very subtle, and I think that in the process of processing the screenshots and printing them, the actual changes sometimes get lost.

And sometimes the "before" and "after" images are just plain wrong. The section "Correct a Listing Horizon" shows "before" and "after" images. I stared until my eyes blurred over, but I could not see any difference. So I got objective: I scanned the page in, clipped the images, mirrored the "before" one, and compared the two side-by-side, pixel by pixel. They are identical down to the pixel. I've uploaded the result to the "Customer Images" section at the top of the page so you can see for yourself.

Enough bitching: there are several sections of the book that are purely written for professionals (copyrighting, the more esoteric workflow practices...), but I'm quite happy that I chose this as my first ever Photoshop book.

Being a Raw enthusiast I have read many books and articles concerning post processing using the Adobe Camera Raw Converter.
Even though this book only uses Adobe Photoshop CS2 as the basic Raw converter there are gobs of information that will help guide you through the Camera Raw process from Raw capture to final printing. When and if you upgrade to CS3 the additions to the Raw Converter can be easily be integrated into your workflow.
This book is broken down into three major sections with chapters that provide step by step techniques by various professionals on How to use - Adobe Camera Raw. These major sections are: Workflow and Imaging Evaluation, Image Prtocessing Techniques and Add Finishing Touches in Photoshop.
The presentation used by the author is excellent and should be in my opinion,very helpful to anyone considering using the Adobe Camera Raw Converter. With that said, I highly recommend this book.

If photoshop is you image editing software of choice, then the more you know about Camera Raw and its non destructive
approach to editing the better. This is a very complete text. It is somewhat technical. Be prepared. It is a great resource.

Adobe Camera Raw Studio Skills is a great resource for CS2 users. Each Chapter is written by an expert in that particular area. Yet each chapter is equally easy to read and follow. One of the bonuses of this book is that it integrates Adobe Camera Raw with Bridge and Photoshop, so there are tricks and instructions that incorporate all three to get your desired results.
Along with through instructions of all the Adobe Camera Raw tools, it covers workflow, HDR, blend modes, black and white conversions, advanced use of free transforms and a host of others.
The name suits it well-Studio Skills. After reading it, you may feel as if you do have your own studio!