Customer Reviews

Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace" by Dan Margulis is definitely worth reading and is most entertaining. I don't agree that it is "the most revolutionary book on digital imaging ever written" and it is certainly not a comprehensive look at Photoshop CS2. If you want comprehensive, get the gold standard: "Real World Photoshop CS2.

But there are some interesting gems buried in here that might improve your digital output. To me the biggest discovery was the idea of using curves in LAB color space to increase color variability. We are not just talking saturation here, but rather color separation. His explanation for why we want this is that cameras lack the sense of simultaneous contrast common to most human beings. When we see a lot of similar colors in close proximity, we break them apart.  He shows how we can do that in Photoshop. It makes a big difference on some images.

His writing style is quirky, intelligent and often funny. That helps for such complex ideas. I think this book should only by used by advanced readers.

He relishes taking positions that are against the mainstream. For example, he argues that for photographic images high-bit editing is worthless.  Likewise, he does not illustrate the use of Adjustment Layers or Layer Masks which are part of the standard workflow for most advanced users.

What is so wonderful about all his ideas, which go against the current accepted wisdom, is that he makes you question what you are doing. He presents his arguments using concise logic. It made me frequently pause and question my workflow.

Bottom line: This book should be at the top of the reading stack for Advanced Photoshop users. Learning how to increase color variability alone makes it worthwhile.

Henry Domke.

Photoshop LAB Color is targeted at photo editing/correction using a method that is either completely unknown to most Photoshop users, or is at least only slightly familiar. If you think you already know all about LAB, don't buy this book. If you know nothing about LAB and you use Photoshop as your photo editor, this book will be a revelation to you. It's chock-full of excellent info and real-world examples of problem-photo corrections using LAB, and it explains in detail why LAB is often a better color space to work in than RBG (or CMYK).

Also, this isn't an absolute beginner's book but it doesn't pretend to be, and warns you that this can be a subject that requires a lot of thought to grasp completely.

Here are a few pluses and minuses as I see this book:

Positives:
1. The author has a sense of humor, and most of the time he's funny. This is well-balanced and the book doesn't rely heavily on humor to get you through it. If you prefer dry manuals full of bland statistics and dusty white-page explanations on theory and history, though, this ain't a book for you.

2. IMO this book is well-organized. The author starts with the basic concepts of LAB color, using simple changes to photos using LAB and shows you the differences between changes to the same photo using the RGB and CMYK color spaces. As the book progresses, the examples of problems become more and more complex so the solutions also become more complex.

3. The author uses lots of photos to show you what he's talking about, and they often take up lots of room on the pages. This book is about photo editing in LAB color, so this shouldn't be a big surprise to most people, and it's a definite benefit to SEE what the author is talking about.

4. If you are relatively new to Photoshop, there are many excellent techniques the author uses in conjunction with LAB that apply to good Photoshop editing in general, and you'll get a lot out of this book even if LAB color makes your head spin.

5. The book comes with a CD full of the original (unaltered) photos the author used in the book. This is cool, because you can take the photos into Photoshop and try them out yourself using LAB corrections. Of course, it's great to have the CD but if you don't sit in front of a computer while you read (I've read this book often on the bus to and from work every day) the pics in this book are invaluable as examples.

6. LAB Color is densely packed, but the type-face is large enough that you won't destroy your vision trying to read it. It will definitely take you a while to get through it, but it'll be very much worth your time.

7. Compared to the price of many other Photoshop books out there, this one is cheap and more than worth the price for what it offers.


Slightly Negatives:
1. The Forward and author's Intro are unnecessarily long and self-congratulatory, but you can decide that for yourself and skip a few pages if they bore you. I skimmed through both, got the gist of what they were saying, and moved on to Chapter 1. Not a big deal.

2. Example photos occasionally end up on different pages than the text that refers to those photos. It isn't always the case, and the problem is easily solved by turning back or forward a page or two. Sometimes irritating, but big deal!

Err, that's all I could think of, because I found this book to be very valuable overall. This one is definitely worth your time and money!

Developed in 1976, the LAB color space is a means to expedite color conversions to an industry standard. Photoshop gets LAB values from pantone, Inc., that enable it to construct the PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors that are the defacto standard in the graphics industry.

"Photoshop LAB Color" by Dan Margulis is a highly technical work that can be intimidating at first. However, if you work with digital images in Photoshop or other similar software that support the LAB color space, then I believe this book is indispensible for increasing your understanding of how to make superior color corrections that are not otherwise possible using RGB alone.

Note that this book is not intended for Photoshop Elements users because Elements does not support the LAB color space.

Although the book can be challenging, Mr. Margulis has thoughtfully organized it so that both novice and expert can and will benefit from using the LAB color space.

The first six chapters of the book are organized so that the first half of each chapter can be used by those who are not yet expert Photoshop users. He skips most of the technical jargon, describing only the necessary steps to use the techniques. In chapter one, for example, learn to use the LAB color space with surprising results in just a few easy steps.

The second half of the first six chapters take the reader into more technical discussions for a greater understanding of the use of colors and the LAB color space.

Chapters seven through sixteen are more advanced, and I would recommend that you be comfortable with using most of the common editing features of Photoshop before delving into this part of the book. If you're not yet ready for the advanced techniques after finishing chapter six, then set the book aside and return to it later.

To reap all of the benefits of using the LAB color space, however, you will need to put on your virtual SCUBA gear and explore the mysterious depths of LAB. The journey will be challenging, but the results will be well worth the effort.

As other reviewers have pointed out, you will most likely need to re-read or at least review this book more than once to become proficient and to understand the technical aspects of the LAB color space.

Using the LAB color space will not work for every image. But for those images for which it is appropriate, it will provide fast color correction with results that can be superior to using RGB and in many cases that would otherwise not be possible to achieve.

I would not recommend this book to Photoshop users who do not yet understand the functions of curves and channels.

Included with the book is a CD with all of the images used in the book's tutorials organized by chapter. Use the images to follow along with Mr. Margulis as he introduces you to LAB.

Enjoy.

What an amazing book. This book offers a unique perspective, careful explanations, humor, and so much carefully thought out information, that it is far superior to the normal list of features one finds in so many books.
This author is probably the only one doing real research with Photoshop, pushing our understanding, and making our images better.
It will take me some time to plow through it, but you will learn from almost every page; often having to reread sections to absorb them and then experiment in Photoshop.
A remarkable book, but not for the novice.

I am a landscape photographer, and am constantly honing my technique in the field and behind the computer. If you have any interest in color accuracy and maximizing your work, this book is one of the rare gems that will give you tools very quickly....and in the back of each chapter....will give you the theory behind it as well. I have read MANY books on Photoshop....this book will enlighten you and take you down the rabbit hole as far or as little as you wish.

Warning....it is a sledge hammer of a technique....and at first...your shots will take on an oversaturated feel....the best way to tone it down is to use curve layers and reduce the opacity to 10-20%...this puts a scalpels' edge on the sledge hammer that is LAB.


This is a must buy for any serious photographer.

Roman

This is simply the best book I've found on Photoshop. After reading more than 10 different books on the subject, I learned more from this book than all the other 10 combined.

This is not a beginners book. You should already be generally comfortable with layers and curves and RGB color and how to use Photoshop in general.

While much of the book is about how to use the LAB color mode in Photoshop to achieve things that can't be easily achieved other ways, the real benefit of the book is that you end up learning a lot of other things about retouching and Photoshop including: advanced curves, blend modes, color modes, how to use channels, blend-if settings, creating masks from channels, color correction, color enhancement, contrast enhancement, separating color from contrast, sharpening, etc...

The first few chapters contain "cookbook" style information that nearly everyone can benefit from after only a short amount of reading. The later parts of the book start to combine different techniques and start to teach you how to analyze the problem in your image and the different tools available to you to solve it so you can pick the best tool for the job.

In the end, you'll learn a lot about Photoshop that isn't just applicable to the LAB color mode.

If you average 1 star and 5 stars you get 3 stars. There are some photo saving procedures in his book (5 stars), but it's torture reading the prose (1 star). But, to be completely fair, Margulis is not a zealot and is very open about when you should use LAB. He states (p.144)-"The general reasons to go into LAB would be the desire to do one of the following:
1. Increase variation in colors
2. Make certain colors purer
3. Blur away color noise
4. Use shadow/highlight command to open shadow detail
5. Increase contrast in a small tonal range
6. Simplify difficlt retouching
If you're not trying to do any of these things, there's no point in using LAB at all."

That's it in a nutshell. So don't get so emotional about LAB; it's only another great tool. Period.

The first reason he states (above) for using LAB is probably what a good photographer would use 95% of the time and the rest rarely.

When I started this book I found it quite heavy going,due in the main to the constant references to illustrations and curves being either on the previous pages or next page. After a while I found this very frustrating.
However, all the frustration has been well worth it as the content is simply awesome!
My previous excursions into LAB were to use the Lightness Channel to sharpen images. No more! I am now half way through the book again on my seventh read and suspect it will not be my last, because as I said earlier it is not an easy read, but it not only brings a new meaning to LAB it puts a new perspective on Photoshop. (Of all the books I have on Photoshop not one goes into any detail about LAB).
As Dan points out several times in the book it is not the answer to all color problems, but where it is, it really is!!
The impressive thing for me is once you have understood and mastered his techniques (hence the seven reads), it only takes seconds to transform drab, flat uninspiring images into vibrant works of art. Fantastic.
If you have images which are flat, need color correcting, need a color shift, noise removal, better sharpening, blending............I could go on and on, then this is the book for you. It is packed from cover to cover with examples of various techniques plus of course a CD of images to work along with.
You may find it heavy going to begin with, but stick with it as the rewards are more than you could ever imagine. A gem of a book!!!

First of all, my bias: I am extremely critical in my color evaluation for my fine art photography, I still use scanned film images, and I am not running massive quantities of images through a deadlined workflow. With that in mind, I must say that Margulis's book has broadened my horizons considerably, to the extent that unless color is right on in the scanned image my first reflex is to convert it to LAB color mode, correct it, and then go back to RGB for fine-tuning (often, I print directly from LAB, though). There's a steep conceptual learning curve with this book if you're going to avoid a formulaic approach to color correction (if you're going to do that, use iCorrect EditLab, which sort of corrects most things and doesn't involve much thinking).

But for my difficult images, some of which have defied the darkroom and wet processing and all kinds of digital manipulation for years, I have found a kind of salvation. Many of these images were easy to correct in LAB once I gained a basic understanding of the principles from Dan's book. It's not (as he points out) a panacea; some things are better done in RGB. But these new techniques and mental approaches are a valuable addition to my armamentarium.

Some reviewers don't like the author's style; I happen to get along with it fine and don't find it off-putting, but more the reflections of someone who has thought deeply about the subject and is trying to share more than just the recipes.

This is easily one of the most significant books for me since Ansel Adams introduced the Zone system. Bravo, Dan Margulis!

thank you Dan for this book. Just came back returned home with a million pictures. All were good, but no matter how much I bracketed, what time of day etc. I just could not get the sheer, black gorgeous walls of the Black Canyons of the Gunnison to look right. I looked up some information from his first book but noticed that at Amazon he had just published his next book about alternative color spaces and I bought it ASAP.

He is so correct about the landscapes of the western USA. All of them have beautiful shades that just do not come out right. Another example that I had problems were the subtle peaches of the Coral Sand Dunes in Utah. Anyway, using his technique you can tease out these subtle colors without having a "super saturated" color foto.

Speaking of "super saturated" in the publishing world of Photoshop books you have on one end of the continium the the quick tip books from Kelby and at the other end the Margulis books. What you want to know about PS is up to you...you know what information you want or need. This book will hurt your pea brain, but will give you a deep understanding of the why and how color spaces. When you are done with the book you will feel like a Master Photoshop Professional.

With regards to his writing style, when I read his first book it annoyed the heck out of me until I attended his courses at the annual Photoshop conferences. Now I laugh out loud while I read...as I hear his no nonsense voice in the back of my mind.

If the writing is long and boring, try getting through all of Ansel Adams books on the film, the camera and the darkroom and his comparisons of photog. to music. In the 21st century the photographers tool is his/her digital camera, his/her darkroom is Photoshop, and our guru is Margulis.