Photoshop for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book [Paperback]

Ellen Anon (Author), Thomas Grey (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0782144276 | ISBN-13: 978-0782144277 | Publication Date: August 19, 2005

This is the first book to teach nature photographers practical Photoshop skills that will solve their most common problems. Authors Anon and Grey provide a real-world approach that simulates a workshop experience, feature gorgeous photography, and include tips and techniques from the biggest names in nature photography.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"I'm very impressed with the scope of the work in this book, the depth of the knowledge, and the clear instruction. Tim and Ellen do a fantastic job of guiding the reader through the technical maze of digital photography."
—Art Wolfe, world-renowned nature photographer, artist and author

To produce outstanding nature photographs, it's essential that you optimize your capture both in the field and in the darkroom. Written cover-to-cover to fit the unique needs of nature photographers, this practical book addresses the tools, techniques, and workflow ideally suited for natural subjects. You'll figure out how to plan for overlapping landscape exposures, sharpen animal eyes, edit sky and land separately, and repair delicate butterfly wings. You'll discover effective shooting tips. And above all, you'll learn what it takes to become a master in the digital darkroom using Photoshop.

In Photoshop for Nature Photographers, acclaimed photographers and instructors Ellen Anon and Tim Grey use real-world examples and inspiring images to bring a pro photo workshop experience right to your desktop. They also include valuable tips from esteemed nature photographers including John Shaw, Arthur Morris, Charles Glatzer, and Joe McDonald.

Inside, you'll learn the skills necessary to maximize the impact of your nature photographs, including how to:

• Operate your camera to take the best possible captures in the field
• Customize Photoshop for your particular needs
• Use selection and brush tools to optimize your images
• Process raw captures to retain maximum detail
• Make exposure adjustments to reveal specific details
• Fine-tune color to match or improve on what nature offered
• Combine images to create special effects
• Get expressive with filters, montages, and multiple exposures
• Prepare and sharpen your images for print or web
• Improve your efficiency with actions and batch processing
• Use new features in CS2 such as Mergeto HDR.
• Learn when deliberate overexposure can increase detail.
• Get the most out of your raw conversion.
• And much more!

About the Author

Ellen Anon is an accomplished photographer—her photos have been showcased in calendars, posters, galleries, magazines, and books, including Sierra Club's Mother Earth. Ellen teaches photography and Photoshop workshops for nature photographers around the country.

Tim Grey writes about digital photography for Digital Photo Pro, Outdoor Photographer, and PC Photo magazines. He is the author of Photoshop CS2 Workflow, Color Confidence, and co-author of Photo Finish, all from Sybex. Tim is also a popular speaker at seminars and trade shows. In his almost-daily "Digital Darkroom Questions" (DDQ) e-mail service, he answers questions from photography enthusiasts and pros.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Sybex (August 19, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0782144276
• ISBN-13: 978-0782144277
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,060,227 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just for Nature Photographers, September 1, 2005

By 

Conrad J. Obregon (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book (Paperback)

Although there are many pieces of software that will let a computer user manipulate digital images, Photoshop has become the standard. Using the techniques of the tool, "Photoshop for Nature Photographers" covers the digital photography process from the moment of setting the defaults in a digital camera to the final production of a digital output, whether to a printer or a monitor. It presents basic concepts that will prove useful to the digital beginner, but also includes tips that may be new to the experienced Photoshop user. It also provides an excellent refresher to the individual upgrading from an earlier version of Photoshop to Photoshop CS2. Although the examples are drawn from nature photography, the book should be of use to all digital photographers.

It spends its earliest pages discussing some fundamental concepts applicable to the time of capture that will effect the ultimate product, like RAW versus JPEG, white balance and histograms. Because Photoshop offers a number of setup preferences that will effect the use of the software, the authors recommend particular selections. They then explain the basic tools of Photoshop, like Adobe Bridge (although strangely there is no mention of using Bridge to import files from your memory card to your computer), Camera Raw and cropping and move on to exposure and color adjustments. All of this is easily understandable and can help the new user learn how to process digital images and can suggest ways to improve the workflow of the more experienced user.

The experienced user will probably find something useful in the chapter on composites where the authors discuss how to create panoramas, expanding dynamic range and depth of field and combining elements from several pictures. It was here that I discovered several techniques, like a "cookbook" approach to expanding latitude that I had never encountered before.

The end of the book includes a discussion of creative techniques like montage, outputs and the Photoshop facilities for mass processing: actions and batch processing.

The workbook aspect of the text takes the form of a CD full of images that are specially selected to let the user practice a technique. While a photographer could use his own images as well, taking the offered images and following the step by step procedure described by the authors will prove useful where the reader doesn't quite comprehend the process presented.

Photoshop often offers several different approaches to manipulating a picture and occasionally the author's preferences vary and each presents his and her approach.

Although the book was quite comprehensive, and indeed offered techniques I had never encountered before, it was not all encompassing. As an example Grey, in another book, "Color Confidence" provides a method of setting target black and white values, to ensure that shadow details can be seen. He has not included the procedure in this book.

If you want to learn to use Photoshop in a linear fashion, with understandable instruction, presented in a logical workflow, this is as fine a text as you will find. On the other hand, if you like tutorials that start with a single image and develop that image using many tools and require you to actually manipulate the image, and then use other images the same way, to make different points, then I would recommend Barry Hanes "Photoshop Artistry" which is updated for each new version of Photoshop.

If you know Photoshop, you probably will learn something new if you go through the book. But you might benefit as much by picking up one of the other Sybex books by Tim Grey and his associates, like " Color Confidence" or "Photoshop CS2 Workflow" or Jon Canfield's "Raw 101".

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book for Nature Photographers, August 21, 2005

By 

William L. Sharwell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Photoshop for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book (Paperback)

This book is highly recommended for the photographer who wants to maximize time in the field instead of in front of a computer. The book is not designed as a photoshop reference book but is accurately described by the subtitle of "A Workshop In A Book" as it lays out an orderly workflow for the photographer to process an image. The book clearly and concisely explains each topic without overloading the reader with excessive detail on every possible way to do something with photoshop.

The book starts out by making the critical point of getting the reader to think as a digital photographer. After making sure that the photoshop environment is properly set up and a review of basic tools, the book methodically works through Camera Raw conversions, image clean up, exposure adjustments, and color adjustments. The book has two especially good chapters on making composite images and creative techniques (B+W, filters, montages, and multiple exposures). A chapter on output explains sharpening and noise reduction. The final chapter deals with automation (actions/batch processing) and assorted topics including borders, greeting cards, and making business cards.

The book comes with a CD of sample images from each chapter to allow the reader to practice each subject as it is explained in the text. I also liked the hints from many noted photographers including (but not limited to) Michael Reichman, Charles Glatzer, Greg Downing, Darrel Gulin, John Shaw, and Arthur Morris who personal tips on assorted topics throughout the book.

I highly recommend this book to any nature photographer who wants to learn how to do things right in photoshop with as little hassle as possible. The CD is an excellent touch. This book is the equivalent of a workshop with the added bonus that you can work at your own pace.

47 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars good, but not as expected, August 16, 2005

By 

John Stevenson (Colorado Springs, CO U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Photoshop for Nature Photographers: A Workshop in a Book (Paperback)

I am a little disappointed with this book. It contains exactly the best plan right on the cover and in the Introduction - that what is needed for a reader involved with natural world photography is a specialized, workshop-type tutorial. Better still, there's a short but practical philosophical point made right up-front, on the advantages of pre-visualizing the image output opportunities that Photoshop can provide whilst actually taking/making the original photographs. But, thereafter, specialization and pre-visualization disappear almost completely for a good long while. To the point that only at p. 107 (of 297 pages in total) can the authors exclaim: "At last we're in Photoshop itself!". So, by then, about a third of the volume has been consumed with a preamble; a valuable one perhaps for the Photoshop beginner, but - equally well - covering material which is already available from numerous of the mainstream Photoshop guides. Moreover, the preamble itself is based entirely on digital capture in-camera (i.e., none of it covers converting conventional film-based images to digital files, even though many nature photographers still choose to shoot on film and/or have archives of excellent work on slides). Overall, the guts of the book, containing valuable workshop material for (say) a wildlife photographer, is just chapters 5 through 8 (though the last two of these are "Composites" and "Creative Effects", which will not appeal to everyone, at least not for a while yet...). And as to whether there might be different or better options in image correction and optimization for say floral close-ups as distinct from landscapes, or yet for those opportunistic wildlife shots where the exposure is definitely wayward; well, we still do not know. Perhaps the book (plus CD) will be the most useful for a photographer who has just transferred to "shooting digital" and is also a newcomer to Photoshop's digital darkroom.