54 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
No Kidding, December 6, 2007
This review is from: Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom (Paperback)
"Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom" ought to be on most photographers' short list of books to read about Adobe's newest image processing software.
The book resembles many of the other books on Lightroom in that it leads you through the five parts of Lightroom, including cataloging, adjusting the image, creating a slide show, printing and creating a web site. It shows you what the sliders do and how to manipulate an image to improve it and send it to a useful output. What makes this different is the audience at which it aims.
The book is not aimed at the novice who has to be taken through the process step by step, like Scott Kelby's "
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, (Voices That Matter)" (and for those who might have been put off by Kelby's sophomoric sense of humor, it's deadly serious, without a single joke.) Instead it's aimed at people who have some experience with image processing programs, like Photoshop. When the authors discuss curves they don't tell you the benefits of tonal adjustment or what a curve is. Instead they tell you how Lightroom's targeted adjustment tool, which is something other software doesn't offer, can ease the job of adjusting curves. On the other hand, sometimes the authors are just a little too spare. They don't even mention the range sliders in tonal curves.
When Lightroom offers several different approaches to a task the authors tell you what their preference is, which can be quite useful. On the other hand I sometimes disagreed with them. For example, they advocate applying keywords to images on import. My own experience is that the list of keywords that pops up when you start to type on the import menu is much too sensitive so that it's easy to select a wrong keyword, which one then has to undo. I much prefer dragging my images to the keyword tags. Moreover, the authors didn't mention the importance of parent-child keywording or the ability of Lightroom to export and import keyword lists.
Where they really shine is in revealing a few of the hidden Lightroom capabilities. For example, there is a good discussion of editing Lightroom presets in a text editor. The authors also tell you how to set up presets so that they can be accessed by multiple catalogs.
The authors didn't spend a lot of time talking about the importance of a folder system because they recognize that Lightroom's method of recovering files by keywords, metadata and so forth reduces the importance of filing organization.
This book covers Lightroom versions to 1.2. With regard to the latest features, like the improved sharpening facility, they are discussed here. I just wish authors would devote a little more attention to the values of input sharpening, as advocated by the late Bruce Fraser. This is still uncharted Lightroom territory.
This is a book for the individual who already has some familiarity with Lightroom and is not looking to learn the fundamentals, but instead needs to look at the software's capability to take processing to a higher level. Inevitably that means reviewing some familiar material but it is worth it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too brief to be of use, to many diversions into unrelated issues, April 11, 2008
This review is from: Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom (Paperback)
I completely disagree with the positive feedbacks regarding this book for a variety of reasons. I took it fascinated by the "covers Version 1.2" note, thus suggesting a specialized "version 1.2" text, a most current book of them all, an advanced insider instruction to Lightroom. The dilemma about Lightroom is that it keeps changing from version to version. Users of this program know about its immaturity and stability issues. "Version 1.2" really sells in such conditions.
Another reason to pick this book was that I like to read the essays from Outback Photo and the FotoEspresso Online Magazine by the same author. But the reality with this particular book is different:
1) Too short to really provide any add-on value to the standard Adobe's manual, and to the many web-zines. 200 pages, minus approx 50 *not* about Lightroom at all, make this book too short to cover any advanced issues in the 5 main modules of Lightroom. This book is virtually just as brief and insufficient, as is the PDF file provided with the Lightroom by Adobe.
2) Tries to please everybody at the risk of not satisfying anybody, to quote the great Donald Knuth from one of his forewords. For example, do you really need to buy a specialized "version 1.2" Lightroom book to learn about what is a Jpeg and what is a RAW file? Yes, its true! This thin booklet spends a few pages to tell you revelations that Jpeg has different levels of compressions, and, yes, you guess it: You should use the lowest compression for highest quality.
3) Digresses into usage of other software and/or hardware. Do you really need whopping 3 full pages with screen shots from a Huey screen calibration software? No, you surely do not need that, a product flyer and a self guiding menu will do it! Besides, Huey is only one possibility. We have also all the "Spiders" and several more. In any case, I would rather be using the manual provided with the device instead of buying an extra book about something else, to look into it for another copy of a hardware gadget manual. I use Huey, its fantastic. And trust me, the menu is self guiding. You ought to press the Next button and proceed with the instructions. These 3 pages 191-193 in this book should be better devoted to Lightroom.
4) Poor print quality. It is really kind of difficult to talk about color, and look at the pale faded looking print by rokynook press. These images look like projected through a light gray filter.
5) Instructions seem to be very MacIntosh oriented, thus not attracting the vast majority of users, who are rather likely to use Windows and see completely different Lightroom menus. Its basic statistics...
I am at peace with author attempt to describe the workflow between Lightroom and Lightzone (8 pages), but this shows even more how few information is about Lightroom 1.2 per se. Do you need more examples of "not to the topic"? Have you seen compact flash cards in a box? Jeez, now you can! Have you seen a card reader? Now you can too.
One puzzling thing about Lightoom are its color curves. I am a seasoned computer scientist with a PhD, I do photograph for 30 years, and yet I fail to make any use of them based on information and instructions provided so far. I would rather be still using RawShooter, but Adobe bought and shut it down to "assimilate" its user base for Lightroom. A look into Adobe's forums shows just how many people are confused, if not lost in Lightroom's baroque interface, shuttered by bugs, malfunctions and poor performance. Such program needs instructions of more experienced photographers, who maybe stand in direct contact with Adobe development team and can explain what the manual and own experiments fail to provide.
Would you believe that the ENTIRE set of development operations, what includes these dreaded tone curves, is covered on mere 32 pages (pages 78 to 111, chapter 4.) Can we really learn anything new but to see another enumeration of menus and sliders in such a brief description?
Example: Split toning, half page 98. ..."split toning can also be (mis)used to reduce the blue cast of your shadows." Excellent, I am excited! Lets see it, lets learn!! Oops, there are no instructions, no lesson of just how to (mis)use the split toning to work on the blue shadows... This was it! Authors said "it can be used" and that was it. This is the KIND OF VALUE PROVIDED BY THIS BOOK. I am sorry, this does not do it.
My recommendation is to take rather Mikkel Aaland's book, what is clearly my favorite among the otherwise hastily thrown books about Lightroom.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must have, July 22, 2008
This review is from: Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom (Paperback)
I am a self-taught Photoshop hack. First started using it when version 3 came out (on a TON of 3.5' floppy disks). I have been able to use it enough to generate/ edit web images, scan prints, etc. It is grossly overpowered for what I use it for, but it's all I know and the company I work for is willing to pay for it. I am equally inept in my photographic workflow processes. I just take pictures, use my limited knowledge of Photoshop to get them to a point where I like the finished product, and go on my merry way. Until now.
Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom is helping change my bad habits. Originally written to cover Lightroom 1.2, the processes are still applicable to 1.41, the latest version I am using. I had seen Lightroom and sort of dismissed it as just more $$ to spend until I started reading this book. Managing Your Photographic Workflow with Photoshop Lightroom has given me insight into using the tools contained in Lightroom and how using them will affect my images. At just over 200 pages, this book is full of images and practical examples. I used to edit my images exclusively in Photoshop. Now I do most of my post processing in Lightroom, exporting the results to be uploaded into flickr, iStockphoto, or burned to CD. I doubt I would have changed my habits were it not for this book. Needless to say, it is highly recommended if you have been curious about using Lightroom.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
