Customer Reviews

Photoshop Color Correction

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have spent many years doing electronic prepress, color correction, and design, and one question I get repeatedly asked is "how do I get better color from my computer?". Now, I can point them in the direction of this excellent book.

Mr. Kieran provides a solid foundation of what color correction is, and why it is necessary. His first section on "Color Fundamentals" reminds me of the old "Pocket Pal" book every designer lived by, except better written. This introduction gives you a solid and understandable overview of color correction, its terms, and its purpose. Building on this foundation (don't skip it!), the book then goes on to a thorough explanation of how to use Photoshop to improve the color, tone, and quality of your digital photos.

The book is framed by what the author calls the "essentials of color correction" -- highlights and shadows, netral tones, contrast, and sharpening. I was very happy to see this organization because it mimics the process I use every time I professionally work on a photo. Mr. Kieran goes into a great amount of detail for each of these "essential" steps. He begins each section with a thorough description of the "why", then step-by-step explains the "how". The book is crammed with color photographs, clearly illustrating both technical issues like how histograms relate to changes in the image, as well as demonstrating each step of the correction process.

Two very practical sections stand out: Mr Kieran gives a great overview of all of the ways you can convert a color photo to black and white, and all of the ways you can sharpen a photo (two things I am constantly asked!). There as so many ways to do these basic tasks, it's great to have a solid description, complete with illustrations, and explanations of when to use one method over the others.

In conclusion, a good solid practical book - one that anyone serious about good photos should give a read.

There are many books on photoshop techniques that are of interest specifically to the photographer (Martin Evening's fine book for example, or Katrin Eismann's great book for v6), but I have seen none that cover the breadth of material in Kieran's book, or have as much depth. Color correction can be an exceedingly difficult thing to do correctly, even for experienced photoshop users; with Keiran's step-by-step tutorials and many image samples, the reader is soon equipped to tacked rather difficult problem shots. Many other topics such as sharpening and printing are also covered, of course. Along with with Barry Haynes' Photoshop Artistry (v6 or v7) and the books I mentionend above, Kieran's Photoshop Color Correction has quickly become a welcome addition to my central core of indispensible photoshop guides. If you are a photographer and use photoshop, you NEED this book!

What I liked about this color correction book over the other leading one (Dan Somebody's "Professional Photoshop") is that this one is RGB centeric. There's correction examples done in CMYK and Lab, but RGB correction is considered by the author to be the master working space -and rightly so, well at least for me with RGB sources and RGB output. It's important to understand that this is not a beginner book, nor even an intermediate level user book, it'd be best for someone who is already very good at using photoshop, but wants to know more specifically about color correcting photographs.

There are some wonderful techniques in this book for mixing channels, and luminosity and cool contrast tricks. There's a good chapter on sharpening too.

My problem with the book was with the included CD, the images are way too low rez to even bother working on. It's best to use your own images anyway, but there are times when I would liked to have tried his example (and sometimes the example image isn't even present on the CD). But don't let the worthless CD discourage you from the book, which was otherwise very informative.

Photoshop Color Correction contains a wealth of valuable information on Photoshop-based color correction and related image improvement techniques. Its author clearly knows his subject in considerable depth and presents both theory and practice in a clear, easy to follow way. Even if you only absorb and apply the techniques covered in its central chapters, the book will have been worth your while. Yet Photoshop Color Correction is far from perfect.

It suffers from numerous small editorial errors that could easily trip up the unwary. For example on page 192 the shadow point of an RGB image is given as 9C 8M 10Y. Clearly 9R 8G 10B was meant. Or on page 230 cyan ink is said to absorb green and blue light and reflect red, When in reality it absorbs red light and reflects green and blue.

The book is also quite repetitious, hammering home its main points many, many times. After the third or fourth time we are told just how important it is to correctly set the shadow and highlight points, even the dimmest of readers will get the point. Another several repetitions is not likely to help those who still don't catch on.

Finally, the included CD is of very, very limited value. The pictures are tiny -- far too small to be of much use in doing the exercises in the book. The "flat" picture of the trees on the back cover of the book, for example, is 191 x 288 pixels. With such small images the book would have been better with a lower price and no CD.

There is some excellent material in this book, and if you read the book and follow the examples you'll know a heckuva lot more about Photoshop color correction than you did when you started.

So why not five stars?

I subtracted one for the totally unacceptable number of errors in the book, a flaw mentioned by several other reviewers. This book badly needed a technical editor - if it had one, he/she should be fired.

I subtracted another because although the book is very strong on working with CMYK images, for some (not all) techniques it glosses over RGB correction.

I would have subtracted another half star for the poor quality of the images on the CD, were that possible.

As an experienced Photoshop user, I thought that I knew a lot about how to improve the appearance of color images. After reading 'Photoshop Color Correction' however, I now know lots of even better techniques, and my images look significantly clearer and sharper. The chapter devoted to Contrast is worth the price of the entire book, and I use Photoshop more efficiently now, especially thanks to learning about color correction with layers and adjustment layers. Overall, an excellent book for anyone with scanned or digital camera images that they want to improve!

I've read a few photoshop books, and this one is the easiest to understand. The arthur wasted no time to throw in jokes, unrelated examples or what not to confuse you. Every info is right to the point. Unlike some other books I read which only shows you how to do things in one mode, this book actually shows you photo retouching in 3 different modes (CMYK, RGB, LAB) and the reader decides what's best for them. The book contents are very well organized so you know right from the start exactly on what you're learning in a chapter.

However, the CD included in the book was a joke. They are only before and after pictures shown within the book. And when I opened up those pictures, they looked nothing like the ones in the book. I assume it's because of the ICC profile differences. Somehow I feel they included this CD so that they could jacked up the price to $50.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who is serious about making your digital pictures look their best. That's the primary focus of this book. The price is a little too high to include such a junk CD.

Note: Amazingly, I did not buy this book just because it has a 4 or 5 stars, I picked it out from a local book store. The other 4 books I bought and returned were all recommended by internet users on here and have 5 stars. I think if at all possible, it's best to read a little bit of the book you were going to buy before actually buying it. Don't buy it just because it has a 5 stars on here.

The information in this book is valuable. Without the numerous editing mistakes, the book would receive five stars. But the material is frustrating to follow because I can't help wondering if the material I am studying has another typo or another mislabeled or misplaced caption. I have been unable to find a list of errata from the publisher or author. That would help significantly.

The information in this book is very detailed and explains a lot about the theory of color and color correction. But, from a hands-on perspective it lacks the necessary information to easily utilize the information described. Also, it's almost impossible to read without falling asleep.

The image you capture with your camera doesn't have to be the image you share with others. Poor lighting, incorrect exposure, and washed-out colors can ruin a good photograph, but modern editing software-namely Photoshop-can save an otherwise hopeless image.

Photoshop makes it easy to produce great-looking images full of detail and vibrant color, even when the original image is fuzzy and bland. Color expert Michael Kieran calls Photoshop Color Correction a distillation of 10 years' worth of hard-earned knowledge in the field of color correction and color management. In it, he shows you how to improve the detail, color balance, and sharpness of any photograph, regardless of its source, by applying color improvements you can see on both the computer screen and in print.

This book gives an overview of the fundamentals of printing and color theory, and the whys and hows of calibration and color management. You'll learn practical techniques, presented in simple language-how to give the most important areas of an image an extra dose of detail by careful control of Photoshop's curves feature; how unsharp masking can bring images into focus; when to vary the black generation setting and what that means for printing and color correction; how to hold shadow detail; how to manage the Photoshop's separation settings; and more.

High quality color doesn't just happen; sometimes it requires a great deal of work. Photoshop Color Correction demystifies the issues surrounding the tonal structure of images and helps you build an impressive repertoire of skills for analyzing and correcting color. You'll learn step-by-step processes for engineering great color in your photographs and enhancing color, clarity, and contrast.

A companion CD-ROM contains low-resolution versions of the sample images in the book that illustrate the possibilities of color correction using Photoshop tools.

This book teaches such essentials as:
* establishing proper highlight and shadow tones
* keeping neutral tones neutral
* adjusting sharpness to an appropriate level
* understanding various color model

Not convinced yet? Give it a try, you won't regret buying this book. I didn't!