Customer Reviews

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers, ePub (Voices That Matter)

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

About as complete, smoothly-paced and effortless an introduction to LR3's rather daunting interface as this oldtimer has come across. Continues its predecessor's (LR2) step-wise breezy familiarization with the Lighroom 3 interface to shape a basic - but perfectly sufficient - workflow for busy digital photographers. Easily followed step by step full color screenshots, printed on top quality glossy paper, speed the reader towards a solid grasp of the essentials; helpful tips are provided once you have the basics under your belt. The tutorial is equally helpful to the (nearly identical) Windows and Mac versions of LR3; where the two diverge (as in the file system), unique Windows and Mac screen presentations are treated separately with OS-specific screenshots. Not the least, the focused "Seven Point System" concentrates your time and effort on Lightroom's must-know photo editing strategies, without wandering too far afield.

This book is a Godsend for new users -- less so for intermediate skill level users seeking answers for optimizing speed, when to use 32-bit or 64-bit mode, unraveling buried settings, or troubleshooting performance issues and program malfunctions.


In Short: Expertly paced, easy to follow and richly illustrated starter tutorial for Lightroom 3 -- a bumpless ride for newcomers. Upgraders might find it too basic for troubleshooting.

I buy a lot of tech books but after purchasing this one 3 things really stood out to me, having bought his previous 2 books on same topic:

1) the extensive helps in the back - particularly the framing example and "collag-ing" layouts will be very helpful to people.
2) the generous section on full work process - shooting to prints.
3) Among the best in this book though is on pages IV and V - because software always becomes obsolete, but gratitude stirs the soul. You get a feel for the writers desire to be helpful and not just drop facts - it's written in a running narrative form as he leads you through good processes and organizational strategy.

If you have or are considering purchasing LR 3, this book will save you extensive searching and frustration in self discovering all the nuances with features and their intent. A new user could sit with this book and walk themselves through a complete work-flow - beginning to end and experience all the major functionality of the tool.

Kelby is a readable, entertaining writer, clear and concise but the real value is that he is a working photographer/graphics professional who knows how to do exceptional work efficiently - and that approach saves everyone, including the serious hobbyist whose time may be limited just as much as the working pro.

The money spent on this book will be recouped within a couple of hours use of the tool. A must buy book for beginner or current user - there are that many tips and techniques in it. I found something new about LR3 at least every other page and I've been using the tool for a couple of years (versions 1 and 2). Glad I spent the money.

Don't blame Scott Kelby if his Lightroom ("LR") instruction books keep getting larger. Blame Adobe for adding more and more capabilities to this piece of software. But at least the software hasn't yet become "bloatware". And the new capabilities really do add something to the digital photographer's ability to more easily create art. Unfortunately, the on-line help only works when you already have some idea of the function for which you are looking, so it's not useful for learning LR.

"The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers" more or less follows the same format as earlier versions. There are chapters on importing images; using the library module to organize images and customize what you see; editing your images with both global and local adjustments; fixing common problems; exporting the images from LR; moving them into Photoshop; editing black and white images; creating slideshows; printing; creating web galleries; and a case study on portrait workflow. New is Kelby's 7 point system for LR, and gone is the case study on travel photography. Pages usually start out with a definition of the task, like "Creating and Using Multiple Catalogs" with step-by step instructions down the outside of the page and screen captures of the related LR window closest to the fold. (Sometimes the screen saves are unavoidably small for people with poor vision, so you might want to keep a magnifying glass handy for detailed examination.) At the end of each chapter are a number of quick tips that will help the user squeeze the most from LR's capabilities. One other change is a further reduction in Kelby's sophomoric humor which some readers will probably find a relief.

The instructions are easy to follow and are ideal for someone just learning LR. The more experienced user, reading page by page, is bound to get bored reading about techniques that haven't changed. It would have been convenient if a page, listing the instructions for new features only, had been included for those folks. Better yet, since LR has become a mature piece of software with many users, it might be time for the publisher to put out something like the old "Up to Speed" books that only showed the changes in Photoshop. (Given that there is no "Up to Speed" book for Photoshop CS5, this kind of help doesn't appear to be in the cards. The publisher will certainly lose part of the business to on-line videos.)

LR now offers so many capabilities that it is not a surprise to see that some are not even mentioned, like the ability to prepare an entire keyword list in a word processor and import it (although to be fair, the inference of this possibility can be derived from the material).

One should also note that that although the use of all of the sliders and buttons is well explained, there is little that talks about how to apply the capabilities to create more artful images. For that, I recommend another book from the same publisher, "Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Voices That Matter)" by David duChemin.

This is an excellent book to learn LR and to keep next to your computer as a reference.

I like the organization, layout and illustrations in Scott Kelby's book. He leads you step-by-step, with illustrations next to each step, through all the major functions of Lightroom 3. I've been able to validate all but one of his activities but that's due to a bug in the new Lightroom 3. Chapter 1 of the book covers "Importing Photos in Lightroom." When following his procedures, which are the same as shown in the Lightroom help menu, the application freezes and no importing takes place. I researched the Adobe Forums and found a thread that started in Jan 2006, which tells me this problem has been going on for some time and Adobe released version 3 knowing it was not fixed. It is apparently caused by the XP and Vista "/3GB option," which has to be removed for the Lightroom 3 import to work correctly. Based on the specifications provided by Adobe my Dell Studio duo CPU 64-bit should have worked OK.

Scott does an excellent job of covering workflows as well. One chapter I really liked was Chapter 6, "Problem Photos - fixing common problems." I have a lot of landscape photos with backlight problems and without Lightroom it would take a lot of photo-editing to bring out the shaded foreground. He shows how to do this in four easy steps.

And at the end of the book he provides three examples of how he uses his "7-point system" to illustrate how to get the most out of Lightroom every time. He provides three projects to illustrate his 7-point.

There may be some advanced functions in Lightroom 3 not covered in this book, but for the beginner and intermediate user who does not use Lightroom with Photoshop or CS5, this book works fine.

What I like most about Scott Kelby is his ability to structure his books around how the reader uses the software product, rather than than simply documenting the technical aspect of each product feature. He also chooses to write his books in the order of how the reader is most likely to use it. So, one can simply start reading and begin applying new knowledge. He also establishes a great rapport with the reader, speaking in a common voice, and not a technical one. In these respects this Kelby book is no different than previous ones.

In several ways, he has improved his technique. In previous books, he might spend a lot of time, rambling on about some unrelated subject, because I think he likes to write almost as much as he loves photography. Fortunately, he has resisticted this process to the first page of each chapter only. I enjoy his ramblings, as long as he gets down to work after a short break. He also takes a few sentences at the beginning of each section to explain the purpose and use of the particular section. His book covers a lot of territory, and after a few weeks of reading, I am just beginning to learn how much there is to Lightroom 3. In general, I think each new writing, is a modest incremental improvement over the previous book. So at this point Lightroom3 for digital photographers is pretty flawless.

One of the few gripes I have about this book is "Step" approach to basic functions. Firstly not all "steps" are an actual step. In some cases, he simply reinforces or adds more information on the previous step. More imporantly, the Step approach does not lend itself to a quick reference tool. As a user, I find I can follow along and do the process once with the book. The next time, I might remember most of the steps, but need to review others. Unfortunately, I pretty much have to reread the entire section, to find the mini-steps I am missing. I have started to highlight the key points in each step as well as create a label for each step in the margins to help make referencing easier. I think the editor could have done the same thing, to make it less work for the reader. I like the screenshot references, but the detail is pretty small, and difficult to read when needed.

In general, I think that when Scott Kelby first hit the market, he was a bit of a maverick. With this book, he is becoming the standard which his competitors seek to emulate. This book is not perfect, and there is still plenty of room for improvement, but he more than succeeds at making a difficult and technical subject, palatable even enjoyable for the average joe.

Never mind the jokes. They are deadly serious, part of the "personal" marketing approach that sells Kelby's books. They have little to do with humor. Even when they are not working, they are diverting from the daunting nature of the task of mastering LR and give the impression that Kelby is a regular guy and if he can be good at it so can you. Aside from the psychology of its approach, the book is worth every penny for its competent and clear step by step demonstration of how to get the most out of your shots. If you want to understand LR and its ramifications for managing and developing photos, get Martin Evening. He writes in detail and at great length about its features, like an expert geologist describing a landscape. An amazing reference. If you want to get to the summit taking concrete routes, Scott Kelby is your man. Fully illustrated. Quirky by design, but none are better.

I am making the rather painful transition from Adobe Camera Raw(ACR) and Bridge to Lightroom(LR). Yes, all the functionality of ACR is still present, but everything is presented in a distressingly different manner. I studied ACR intensely and have used it probably to a fault, not taking things into Photoshop until absolutely the last minute possible.

This book will help you find all those controls and features. He will even tell you how to rename the files so they include the date, which frustratingly LR does not do automatically.

There are very helpful points like a detailed explanation of how long it takes to download 14 Raw images at various previews:
Embedded & Sidecar: 19 seconds
Minimal: 21 seconds
Standard: minute, 15 seconds
1:1; 2 minutes, 14 seconds

But then there's the workflow, which I don't like. He uses a simplistic pick or reject method of evaluating, and tells you to delete all your rejects. Yikes, with today's inexpensive storage, that really isn't necessary. He doesn't like the star rating system at all. I was taught to use the star system in the old fashioned way the way you would dot negatives in the darkroom. The first round through you select everything you like and give it one dot, or star. The second time you are more selective, and give a second star. I rarely make it as far as five stars, usually three is all in need for the excellent photos to bubble to the top. But the advantage of this method is I have photos to pick from for head swaps, and sometimes I just need to dig deeper into my pile for a photo. If I delete everything but the perfect photos, I'm stuck. Granted he keeps a backup of everything, but I just don't see the need to be throwing things away, or being so black and white.

He also uses this complicated organizational system using collections. I don't see how that is any improvement over organizing by date or event. I heard several speakers at Photoshop World in Las Vegas who say they set up a separate catalog per event, and keep the catalog in the same file/directory as the photos. LR slows down at about 40,000 photos, and if a wedding photographers shoots 4,000 images in a weekend, it doesn't take long to clog LR up.

All of that being said, it is a great reference book to find what you need to know, especially if you are switching from ACR, because you probably already have the skill set, now you just have to get back to doing it without thinking. I just don't like his sometimes simplistic, sometimes too complicated workflow. But maybe you already have that part figured out!

I don't know what it is about Scott's style, but the book seems like an easy / quick read, but manages to convey a huge amount of information. I have the two previous versions, and Scott has managed to improve an already great product, especially with the collections of killer tips. I learned on the 2nd version to read the book from cover to cover, even though I'm an experienced Lightroom user: there are shortcuts, tricks and workflow ideas embedded throughout the book.

Scott takes a highly technical subject that could be mind-numbingly presented and makes it a fun read with plenty of ah-ha moments, and in a single book that works for beginners and experienced users. The format is to take example photos and use the processing of those to cover specific Lightroom functions. The photos Scott uses are available on his website so you can follow along, and he does some amazing things with the photos--my favorite being his manual processing of a black and white photo conversion compared to Lightroom's auto convert function. Awesome difference, and he explains why the differences improve the photo.

Bonuses include the chapter intros that read like Chuck Lorre end credits, a cool gray card at the end of the book, and lots of settings for imports, print layouts, etc. that can be used to jumpstart your own custom settings.

If you've invested in Lightroom, pony up the $30 or so for this book--it'll pay for itself in productivity improvements.

Q) What's the best Lightroom (LR) book to have if you're stranded on a desert Island?

A) The one with the most pages; if you're stranded on a desert island then you'll want to use those pages for kindling.

Now, if you want to know which is the best book for helping you deal with LR then the answer is... It depends. I'll illustrate that by comparing this book against the well written and extremely popular Adobe Lightroom 3 - The Missing FAQ - Real Answers to Real Questions asked by Lightroom Users. The reason for this is that they represent the Best-of-Breed in two different approaches to writing about LR.

Scott Kelby has written a great many books on various flavors of Photoshop and LR. It them he provides explanations of how things work and then gives very clear, extremely detailed examples (recipes) of how *he* uses them. As he is also an accomplished photographer, following his recipes can lead to successful results.

Victoria Bampton, the author or the "other" LR book, has spent a lot of time collecting questions from other photographers. This book is a well organized compendium of those questions along with clear and complete answers.

So, which is approach (and book) is best? It depends. (Weren't't you paying attention a few paragraphs ago?)

If you don't have an established approach to processing your images (work flow) then the Kelby book gives you both the work flow and instructions in one way to implement it. In his LR book that naturally focuses on LR but also includes recipes for Photoshop where appropriate.

If, however, you already have an established work flow and just want to know what all the buttons do, or need specific answers to questions that come up while you're using LR then the "Missing FAQ" might be more helpful. (Also, with the FAQ book you get the added bonus of being able to download a full electronic copy. That means you can have access to all 480(ish) pages of information wherever you are. That is a real handy feature.)

There is, of course, considerable overlap. The FAQ does discuss work flow, albeit in a stepwise fashion. This book provides answers, albeit without the convenience of seeing the questions.

Bottom Line: If you can, get both (I did). You won't be disappointed (I wasn't). If you've never dealt with managing and developing digital images then get the Kelby book. If you want to know how to efficiently apply methods you already know (or think you can figure out on your own), using LR, then the Missing FAQ is probably your best choice.

Author Scott Kelby, an accomplished commercial photographer and renowned PhotoShop expert & lecturer, is extremely well versed in virtually every aspect of Lightroom 3. So this book is a great source of information about how to best use this latest version of Lightroom. But sometimes as I'm trying to find the answer to a question, I want to scream, "Stop with the jokes and entertaining stories Scott, and get to the point"!

Scott's presentation style is friendly, breezy and unique. This helps separate Scott and his book from so many other "how to" manuals. But, there are times I wish he's cut to the chase with an outline or bullet points to explain how to get LR3 to do what you want it to do!