Mastering Color Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book) [Paperback]

Michael Freeman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2005 | Series: A Lark Photography Book

Digital cameras and powerful image-editing software applications provide today's photographer with all the tools needed to control the world of color. Renowned photographer and author Michael Freeman provides a thorough look at the essential ways of dealing with color that will help traditional photographers enter the world of digital photography with confidence and excitement. Using helpful tips and exercises, he covers everything from capture and calibration to workflow management and output. Photographers will find expert guidance on sensitivity, color temperature, and exposure, and invaluable advice on making the most of color as a design element.
Examine subjective and cultural response to individual colors and combinations, the many ways of digitally altering a photo's tones, and how to capture and reproduce color precisely.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Lark Books (September 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579907067
• ISBN-13: 978-1579907068
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #769,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #61 in Books > Arts & Photography > Photography > Color

More About the Author

Michael Freeman, professional photographer and author, with more than 100 book titles to his credit, was born in England in 1945, took a Masters in geography at Brasenose College, Oxford University, and then worked in advertising in London for six years. He made the break from there in 1971 to travel up the Amazon with two secondhand cameras, and when Time-Life used many of the pictures extensively in the Amazon volume of their World's Wild Places series, including the cover, they encouraged him to begin a full-time photographic career.

Since then, working for editorial clients that include all the world's major magazines, and notably the Smithsonian Magazine (with which he has had a 30-year association, shooting more than 40 stories), Freeman's reputation has resulted in more than 100 books published. Of these, he is author as well as photographer, and they include more than 40 books on the practice of photography - for this photographic educational work he was awarded the Prix Louis Philippe Clerc by the French Ministry of Culture. He is also responsible for the distance-learning courses on photography at the UK's Open College of the Arts.

Freeman's books on photography have been translated into fifteen languages, and are available on other Amazon international sites.

They are supported for readers by a regularly updated site, http://thefreemanview.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slightly misleading title, September 17, 2006

By 

Michael G. Roberts - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering Color Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback)

I wondered what I might learn from this book, what could possibly be said on the topic besides vague generalities. Well, the author has gone to great lengths to teach the reader about all the different color spaces out there, and to provide insight into how colors work together in a composition. The result is a work that sensitizes the reader to color issues, without providing much that is prescriptive in the way of either photographic or post processing instructions. If that's what you want, then this book is for you. Perhaps the title ought to have been Mastering Color Spaces and Relationships, since it really does not attempt to elevate the user to mastery of color digital photography.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Large coverage, Too general, September 11, 2008

By 

W. Chung - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering Color Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback)

This is my first photography book about colour. It covers a good large range of topics about colours. From introduction of individual colour, colour temperature, colour properties to colour relationship and colour editing.

However, after years of reading photography magazine and websites, I don't find these information useful or new.

In addition, there are only TWO small pages (the book is not even in A4 size) for each topic, there is no way to go into any details at all.

I don't think it is worth buying this book or recommend this book to any one unless he/she is totally new to photography basic knowledge.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Useful and Informative Supplement to His Design Book, "The Photographer's Eye", September 1, 2008

By 

T. Campbell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mastering Color Digital Photography (A Lark Photography Book) (Paperback)

This book takes his section in "The Photographer's Eye" on color theory and goes a lot deeper and farther. Much more depth into the traditional color contrasts, but also a great deal of informative material on color spaces, color interactions, history, color and media, and possibilities with digital manipulation.

This book would serve very nicely as a text for a color or color theory course in an undergraduate art program. And it is so much more reasonably priced than such "textbooks" as Zelanski's book on color, the price of which is just ridiculous.

If one already owns "Eye" and wishes further, very competent information on color in images, this is a very fine choice. If one just wants to know more about color in images, it is still a very fine choice.