The Creative Digital Darkroom (Paperback)

by Katrin Eismann (Author), Sean Duggan (Author)
Key Phrases: camera raw, smart object, photo filter, Photoshop Lightroom, Gaussian Blur, Soft Light (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This tutorial takes photographers beyond the quick tips and gimmicky effects of many digital photography books. Author Katrin Eismann -- an internationally acclaimed artist, bestselling author, and gifted educator -- offers high-profile work, including her own, as examples for teaching photographers how to use the digital medium to create, edit, and output images that reflect their true vision.

Co-authored by photographer and teacher Sean Duggan, The Creative Digital Darkroom translates skills, concepts, and nomenclature of the traditional darkroom into digital solutions for photographers who sense that, despite the newness of the technologies at hand, there remains a timeless method for learning and practicing photography the right way. This is not a Photoshop book per se, but it does focus on the photographic aspects of Photoshop, something other books claim to do but rarely have the discipline to accomplish. The Creative Digital Darkroom includes:

• Four sections that cover the black & white darkroom, the color darkroom, creative techniques, and production essentials
• Chapters that begin with a thorough foundation followed by numerous tutorial examples that apply the theory to real-world examples
• Examples and a layout that enables readers to find, understand, and apply the featured techniques quickly and easily
• The authors are both renowned photographers and Photoshop experts

Clearly, The Creative Digital Darkroom is not your typical digital photography "how to" book. It's ideal for intermediate and advanced photographers, artists, and educators looking for clear, concise, insightful, and inspiring information and techniques on how to make their photographs shine. The language, and techniques will immediately appeal to serious students and professionals, and the original tutorial images and high-profile work will make the book an important visual resource for educators and art appreciators.

About the Author
Katrin Eismann is known throughout the world for her talent as a Photoshop expert and photographer, but above all she's considered one of the best teachers her field has ever seen. This book uses the clear, concise tutorial approach that made her two previous Photoshop books bestsellers that take photographers beyond quick tips and gimmicky effects.

Sean Duggan is a fine art photographer, educator and Adobe Certified Photoshop Expert with extensive experience in both the traditional and digital darkroom. Co-author of "Real World Digital Photography" and "Photoshop Artistry", he has been helping photographers master Photoshop and digital darkroom technique through his workshops and classes for over 10 years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 429 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1 edition (May 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596100477
• ISBN-13: 978-0596100476
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #9,165 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What This Book Covers and Who It's For, January 18, 2008

By	Maine Character (Westport Island, ME) - See all my reviews

If you've bought a Katrin Eismann book before, you're no doubt looking at this one, too, since her books are so good. And what you've come to expect from her is indeed here - clear, concise information and step by step tutorials with plenty of diagrams showing what's being done. In its layout it's very similar to her Restoration and Retouching books, but denser, with a smaller font and more information, while remaining clear and balanced with a solid presentation. There's very few pages of wasted space.

As the title implies, the theme of the book is using traditional darkroom techniques in the digital world. In fact, part of the audience it's aimed at are experienced photographers who'd like to move to digital and carry over the skills they've learned. Focusing on this theme, the authors give us tools in global and local enhancements of tone and color, as well as sharpening/blurring and removing distractions, to bring out a photo's full potential.

It's all good and thorough, but be aware that in choosing to focus on that, the authors don't touch on many of the tools that are essential parts of Photoshop, including Photomerge, Liquify, Text, and Actions. It also doesn't cover Bridge or printing in depth, but there's actually a chapter on printing available as a PDF at the book's website: creativedigitaldarkroom.com.

It does cover Levels and Curves in more depth than any other book I've seen. It also covers Layer Masks, Shadow/Highlight, Perspective, Blending Modes, Lens Correction, Camera RAW (including the new Clarity tool), Split Toning, Sepia Toning (including Greg Gorman's technique), HDR, LAB, edge effects (using the Filter Gallery), Cross-Processing, and Sharpening, as well as including sections on creating a faded b/w photo and the like.

That said, I do have a few issues with the book. While the landscapes are like those you'd take yourself, many of the photos are a bit too abstract and arty for my tastes. Duggan uses Holgas, pinhole cameras, and a Lensbaby that blurs all the edges, and if you're not into such creative uses of cameras, these can get old once you've seen a few. Also, many are of moody old storefronts and gravestones, which adds a somber tone to the book.

Also, for those interested in working on portraits, there's very few of them here, and nothing about creating dynamic b/w portraits. The five or so portraits are used simply to demonstrate vignetting, sharpening, and the use of a warming filter.

Those points aside, this book delivers. Even when introducing the fundamentals of such tools as Levels and Curves, it goes right into detailed examples of how to use each. Some books merely list what each tool does, simply from lack of room, but by focusing on the essential tools, here you get exactly what you need - a brief overview containing all the important points followed by how you can best use them in your work.

Is a lot of it review? The majority of the tools outlined - the ones you use every day - are indeed covered much as they are in Eismann's Restoration and Retouching. The main difference is that Restoration covers mostly portraits, while this one focuses on landscapes and still lifes. Also, Restoration only covers up to CS2, while this one outlines all the latest tools in CS3, including a good deal on the very useful Black and White filter, as well as the new RAW 4.1 converter. It also gives a good overview of Lightroom, which I wasn't familiar with, but now has me looking that way.

If you already have Real World CS3 or a similar book, you already know more than most about Photoshop's technical aspects, and so you surely don't need a review. Still, this book's two chapters on setting up your Preferences, the different color spaces, and batch renaming are only fifty pages, so there's really not much to skip. And if you don't have Real World CS3, this book actually does cover all the basics you need in setting up your computer and workspace.

By the way, if you don't have CS3, most of the techniques here can be used with CS2 and CS. You won't have the use of the Highlight, Recovery, Clarity, B/W, and Curves tools in Camera RAW, and you won't have the B/W Filter with built-in settings like Infrared, but the authors do tell you how you can use the Channel Mixer, and Levels and Curves work much the same.

To sum up, you'll be pleased with this book if you don't go into it with any expectations that it be anything else. When I first saw it listed, I thought it'd build on where Restoration left off, going deep into creative interpretative techniques now that you have your photos optimized. Such techniques are indeed in the later part of the book, such as in using scanned paper for adding texture, but on the whole this book shows how to use the tools you're used to to get the most out of each photo's tone, color, and dramatic impact. In short, it's for experienced darkroom photographers as well as beginner and intermediate Photoshop users, instead of those who are already advanced in using Photoshop.

If you're a total beginner taking snapshots and are looking for a good overall coverage of all Photoshop has to offer, you might try Deke McClelland's Photoshop CS3 One-On-One or Martin Evening's Photoshop CS3 for Photographers. They're not as thorough as this book in each tool, but they cover more ground, give you a good tour, and set you up fine. From there, if you find your work focusing on family snapshots, portraits, and restoring old photos, go with Eismann's Restoration and Retouching, which covers a great deal more on repairing photos, such as using the floating Healing Patch and Pattern Maker. (You can download a full chapter from her digitalretouch.org site.) And if your interests lead you to fine art or landscape photography, this would be the book to learn from next.

Finally, if you already are a fine art or landscape photographer either new to Photoshop or without a solid grounding in the best use of all the fundamentals, or simply wish to brush up on your skills, this one is made for you.

133 of 145 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars general information with a little something else, January 10, 2008

By	D. Rabinowitz - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Katrin Eismann is a phenomenal author and has compiled two excellent books, photoshop masking and compositing as well as photoshop restoration and retouching...with those books in mind, one may have thought that this book would be special, it's not...the book appears to be aimed at those people interested in a broad understanding of photoshop including workspaces, color management, color settings, types of printers, types of cameras, curves, levels etc...the basics...the authors eventually get into some reasonably "creative" work but not before most of the book deals with general information. There are too many books like this on the market. There are books that specialize in color (any of Dan Margulis's books) and sharpening and layers, masks, skin, etc...To try to pack that all into one book is simply giving one a taste, a general taste of the subject. This may be a good book for the beginner that wants to understand more about photoshop or an educator teaching a basic course, but this is not a book for a moderately skilled photoshop user. Unfortunately, this book was listed without a table of contents or an accurate description of its purpose. I would expect more from a Katrin Eismann book at this point in her career. p.s., thanks for the editorial review...i wish it or something similair would have been available prior to the date this book was first shipped to customers...If you're looking for a good book that focuses on the creative side of photoshop, consider Vincent Versace's, Welcome to Oz. My suggestion would be to proof read a copy of this book at Barnes and Noble etc...and decide if it's right for you. Various opinions will prevail and don't get fooled by reviews that covertly promote the author at the expense of the reader.

70 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One Tip Could be Your Next Money Shot!, January 16, 2008

By	T. Norris (Cleveland, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Why another book on digital photography? Another book on CSx? Another book on RAW image processing? Another book on workflow? Another book on photo composition? Why?
Because it's ONE book! A cohesive litany of eye-to-print, not only "hows", but the "whys"..
This book is about photography. Well written, illustrated and laid out. The organization is like workflow should be, natural, easy to follow. It has gems for the beginner and pro alike. But let's be clear on what the beginner is.
- The book is digital SLR focused.
- The book is ADOBE CS(3) focused.
- The book is RAW image capture focused.
- The book presumes you have workflow needs.
- The book assumes you didn't take the picture you thought you did.
- The book assumes you care enough to fix it.
The beginner here is not someone who got a Canon Pro-Shot for Christmas.
Many photographers have moved from film to digital in the last couple of years, only to be smacked in the face by the EXTREME DIFFERENCE in the workflow of the two media.
Ms. Eismann and Mr. Duggan have done a wonderful job covering so much so well without turning it into a MAC vs PC or CS3 primer. Throughout the ENTIRE book I felt I was working with images and concepts, never sitting in a classroom learning the Adobe interface. Thank you, Katrin and Seán, for that and this book!
If you are a photographer that is buried by all the images, by all the post shutter-click "stuff" and are looking for a life-line of sanity to make sense of it all, this is THE book. The Creative Digital Darkroom is simply the best comprehensive book you can buy, especially for thirty bucks.
Other reviewers have dinged this as a beginner's book. Sure, it appeals to that market, because it is full of step by steps and screen shots and explanations of how and why in CS3, Bridge, Lightroom and third party plug ins that don't exist in such detail in ANY SINGLE SOURCE. This book also gives the reader something that so many others lack - THE PICTURES IMAGES TO WORK ON! Ms. Eismann has, like in her other books, given the reader the links to the photos she uses to demonstrate her experience.
Every concept, tool and technique can be explored implicitly and rotely as shown in the book, but also can be exploded into a vast field of self-exploration. Fun stuff. Cool.
Every section is chock full of ideas and tips that easily could rescue, restore or release that one image that makes the book worthwhile.
There are hundreds of topics explained and visually manipulated on the pages of this book. For example, chapter two, Digital Nuts and Bolts has a section on color space.
Color space. What is it? What is meant by CMYK and RGB and sRGB (not the words cyan, magenta, yellow and black or red, blue, green, but what is Adobe RGB (1998) or Apple RGB or the camera manufactures' sRGB). Color space clipping from different cameras. Color and luminance. For beginners? Perhaps, but I know many a wedding photographer that now straps a Canon or Nikon pro body around the neck and hasn't a clue about what color space, resolution, bit depth, ISO-noise relationships and how to handle them with all those sliders in the software: let the lab handle it...
Five Star Plus