Customer Reviews

Color Confidence: The Digital Photographer's Guide to Color Management (Tim Grey Guides)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I know a lot of people who are totally lost when it comes to producing prints they like. A watercolor artist friend struggles with her Minolta 7i and Epson 2200, jumping through hoops and tweaking images in Photoshop and/or the printer driver. This book (along with monitor calibration) would solve her problems. The advice is comprehensible and comprehensive.
I have been there and done that; owned two Epson 1200s using profiles and inks from a well-known source but never achieved success. If you have felt that pain, read this book.
I subscribe to the author's free mailing list, and find that the accuracy of information in this book is actually better than that he provides online. Tim Grey knows his stuff, though (OT) he seems to be confused about imager size and depth of field.
If you already calibrate your monitor, use accurate profiles for your paper/printer/ink, and such, the incremental knowledge you'll gain from this book will be modest. The workflow I use with my Epson 7600, Bill Atkinson profiles and Eye One Display are very similar to the author's recommendations. If you have gotten that far, you don't need Color Confidence.
If what I just wrote is Greek to you, Color Confidence has the info to get you on the right track. Just be forewarned that you're going to have to fork over for monitor calibration tools or the books's suggestions won't do you much good. That will set you back 3-5 times the cost of the book. You may also have to invest in printer profiling, for $50-1,500 depending on how you approach it.
I also own Real World Digital Photography, Second Edition, which was co-authored by Grey. I'd say that both of these are quite informative if you are a novice, but less so if you are reasonably advanced in digital imaging.

I write reviews of books on Photoshop as part of my work, so I read a lot of them. This has to be the best I have come upon for the aspiring digital photographer. It is not for someone who just wants to take photos of their family at Disneyland, or at a wedding, but for photographers who want to get the best from their digital camera; this is a "must read." Mr. Grey describes what to do, why and what to expect, he carefully explains alternatives and warns about the pitfalls. The good illustrations reflect the attention to detail of the writing. It is clear, not too technical and very informative. You will need Photoshop to get the most from this book. If you care about your images, read this book.

Some people shoot pictures with digital cameras, download them, print them up and are happy with whatever they get. Others complain if there is the least deviation in color between what they remember seeing and what gets printed up. It is at this latter group that "Color Confidence" is aimed.

Tim Grey, the author, is a respected teacher of Photoshop techniques and is known to many for the Digital Darkroom Questions mailing list, which many digital photographers read on a daily basis.

This book is aimed at a single issue in digital photography: how to make the output of the digital photography process, be it individual print, world-wide web, or printing press, match the color that the photographer visualized when he took a picture. Several years ago, when photographers were less sophisticated and happy with the ease of getting digital output, this was scarcely a question, but as digital photographers became more experienced (and as affordable techniques became available) more and more photographers began to ask why the output of their printers didn't look like their monitors. The field of color management was born.

With a minimum of technical jargon, the author explains the nature of color. He then tells you how to establish color profiles for input devices, like cameras and scanners, processing devices like computers, and output devices like ink-jet printers, so that all of the devices in the digital darkroom pass on information about the digital photograph that will insure consistency. For computer software, Grey assumes the use of the industry standard, Photoshop. If you use some other image processing software, you will have to interpolate from Photoshop, or find some other source of color management information.

If you read every word in this book, Grey might appear pedantic, because when he discusses using several different devices for a particular purpose, he will repeat many of the same instructions, word for word. But if you later pick up the book, while you are sitting at your computer, you know that what you are reading will be the whole story for the operation and tool that you are using, and that some important hint is not hidden elsewhere.

I?ve long considered myself to be relatively savvy when it comes to color management. However, I picked up a few tips about along the way that clearly made the book worthwhile for me. For example, I understood the function of "soft-proofing" but never really developed a regular work process dealing with this technique. Then I read Grey's discussion and a light bulb went on.

This is not exciting reading, but the author is clear and direct and moves the subject along quickly. If you need to learn about color management for digital photography, this is the book for you.

After reading some of the good/bad reviews expressed by others, I thought I would share my interpretation of "Color Confidence." If you already have a solid understanding of color management concepts and are looking for technical information and setups, then look elsewhere. I am not new to photography but relatively new to digital photography and more importantly, editing and printing my own photographs with a semi-pro inkjet printer. This book laid the foundation for me in color maanagement. I now have a much better understanding of the steps involved in creating a color-managed "digitial darkroom" including setting the proper workspace in photoshop, calibrating my monitor, and creating accurate profiles for devices such as printers. I'm certainly still far from an expert on the topic, but I now look forward to reading more in-depth guides to perfecting my color managed system. I disagree with the review that it is poorly written; I think Tim Grey did a wonderful job taking relatively difficult concepts and presenting them in a fashion that's easy even for the technically-challenged to grasp. I look forward to reading more from him, including his "CS2 Workflow."

How many times have you been disappointed with your photos as displayed on the computer screen? Oftentimes they may look good on the screen but not so well once printed. Tim Grey, author of Sybex's latest book dedicated to digital enthusiasts, helps readers manipulate their digital images more efficiently so the desired output is achieved with minimal waste to your pocketbook and time. Readers are led step by step beginning with capturing color appropriately with digital cameras or properly adjusting scanners and their software to capture the best image. Outputting images, especially to your own printer, but also to professional print houses and to the web and E-mail is thoroughly reviewed. Significant discussion of techniques using advanced image manipulation software such as Photoshop is provided to help readers tweak color balance, brightness, contrast, and many other aspects to achieve the best possible image. Grey closes his book with a summary of the essential steps to achieve the best possible image. Though a CD or DVD is not included, numerous examples throughout the text well complement Grey's points.

One text paragraph illustrates Grey's purpose in writing Color Confidence: "It is often tempting to adjust the image in Photoshop when the printed image doesn't match what you see on the monitor. For example, if the print comes out too magenta, you may be tempted to adjust the color balance in the image toward green to offset the magenta. The problem with this approach is that you are making the image itself intentionally inaccurate in an effort to produce accurate results for a single output condition. What happens when you print that same image with a different printer, ink, and paper combination? You'll have to find new ways to manipulate the image in an effort to produce an accurate print. In effect, you're chasing the print, trying to find just the right way to adjust the image to make it look wrong in just the right way so the print will look the way you want it to look. This is not a good way to work with your images."

Though the publisher advertises Color Confidence as an intermediate text, I recommend to users of Photoshop Elements as well as Photoshop who want to improve the quality of their images, whether they plan output to the web or paper, to take a look at this book. This book is not for those content with the editing capabilities of iPhoto. However, after reading Color Confidence, iPhoto users might get the urge to use Photoshop Elements for image manipulation. Though I will never be a graphic artist, I look forward to reading the book again (too much information to absorb from one reading) to further advance my abilities to produce photographs for which I am proud to share.

Color Confidence is subtitled "the digital photographer's guide to color management," and is a good overview of the subject. If you want to buy only one book, then Colour Confidence is a good choice. If you want lots of detail, then you're better off buying three separate books - Real World Color Management (Bruce Fraser et al), Professional Photoshop (Dan Margulis, on the subject of colour correction, which Tim Grey only touches on), and Mastering Digital Printing (Harald Johnson).

Six stars! This is an outstanding resource for anyone who is interested in getting the best results from their digital darkroom using Photoshop and a good photo printer. This book is full of practical, not just theoretical, information - tips and advice you can put to work immediately. Grey writes in an easy to understand, straightforward manner. There are loads of full color illustrations and graphics. The book covers Foundations, Photoshop Set-Up (with good tips on getting the best configuration), Display (with recomendations on which monitors to choose, calibrating your monitor, etc.), Scanning, Digital Capture (with recommendations about digital cameras, managing digital camera color, etc), Optimization (including excellent advice and tips on making color adjustments), Output (this chapter alone is worth the price of the book), and Workflow. This book will save you time and money, and increase your satisfaction with your digital images (whether you start with film or a digital capture). I am a "confident amateur" photographer and found this book to be chock-full of information, and I have already started to use what I'm learning from it with excellent results.

Simple to read book explaining color management. If you're looking for a technical manual full of design specs, buy something else. If you're looking for an easy to read non-techy book that explains how human color vision works, how color management in the digital world is used and the how/why of applying it, buy this book. Given the low price used, it's a "must have" book for digital photographers. Once I read this, I finally understand what hundreds of technically written web sites failed to get across. I just thought I underastood what this book simply explains is normal plain english. Like I said, maybe a techy person would find this book wordy?

I was really disapointed by the book. I wanted something that would have been closer to the theories and technicals aspects of color profiles. This is mainly a step by step book to follow with specific software (or even hardware) to reach some goal. It is very software and hardware specific - not generic. I learned more about "how color profiles works together" on websites than in the book.

Most photographers agree entering the digital world can be very challenging. There is a vast amount of information to filter through. Tim Grey is an expert in that area and is up there with all the top guys in the digital world. I have personally attended one of his seminars and know for a fact that he is extremely knowledgable and most importantly a very good teacher. He has the ability to take a huge amount of information and put it into simple terms that can be understood. The topics he has covered in this book are all the critical steps that you need to know whether you start out with film or a digital capture. This book will clear up a lot of questions about working with digital images.