Customer Reviews

Practical Color Management: Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography

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I was looking for a book to expand and hone my knowledge of colour calibration and management, since I do retouching and art direction professionally and I want to better control my press output. I was a little worried that this would be too basic when I started the book, since it delves into the fundamentals like what a colour gamut is, but thankfully it builds on those basics quickly to provide very helpful techniques that professionals can use to actually improve their work. Setting up a fully-calibrated working environment, from scanner to camera to screen to press, can be a daunting task since each piece of the puzzle needs to be right for it to work but the author does a very good job of explaining these techniques while keeping the tone light. More people should be reading these types of books since getting what you want from an image or design is so critically linked to unfortunately technical-looking things like IT8 and ink-limit charts. Titles like this will hopefully help make this knowledge more commonplace. My only criticism is that the book should have covered more about CMYK, dot gain and black generation since it mentions that you can create a custom CMYK profile in Photoshop but doesn't show any practical applications like making a low-colour CMYK profile for rich greyscale conversion. Many people will still be just hitting CMYK thinking that if the profiles for their devices are right, then they will be set for ideal saturation without understanding they can control the plates. Hopefully this will be addressed in coming editions. Still, a great book.

I was very excited to see this title because color management has always been a difficulty for me with my various job tasks and hobbies. Between web & print design along with heavy digital photography work, getting colors workable across many devices is a constant effort.

At first I was a bit worried that this was going to be just a theory book despite the title. The first several chapters were spent on history and understanding the need and how color management is needed and works. The later chapters delved into some of that nitty gritty I was looking for.

I would not call this a comprehensive guide, yet it was well worth the read for the information it provided. I found it more targeted to those with ink jets and general business printing. Don't be dissuaded if you are often printing on 4 color presses, the workflow tips and understanding here is very applicable.

I enjoyed Eddie's straightforward and easy to understand writing style. The book has a page layout style that is atypical but enjoyable - with heavy emphasis on the visuals.

Yet another large format photography book with an emphasis on pictures and very weak on explanation. I endured only the first four chapters, within which terms were repeatedly introduced which had yet to be defined or explained. The author credits his "color guru" as a supporting author but the extraordinarily poor and suspicious explanations of basic color management concepts leads me to conclude that the author doesn't understand the material in a fundamental way and should have let the "guru" write the book. I tossed the book in the trash after the author equated a pixel with a photon.

One of the major hurdles of the digital imaging revolution has been learning a whole new set of concepts and their associated language. It's a very different science from the analog, silver-based photography of the last hundred years or so and it takes a certain amount of serious concentration and persistence to master. One of the core threads running through all of it is the concept of color management - the control of color data from start to finish so what you end up with is as close as possible to what your eyes saw in the first place.

This is no small order as it includes multiple input, editing, and output devices along with completely different methods of gathering and displaying color information. In addition, there's as much art as science in the process, and agreement on standards has been slow to evolve. Fortunately, we've reached a point in the technology stream where a serious photographer or graphic artist can now do a very credible job of keeping colors on track with a modicum of specialized tools and the purposeful discipline to use them.

For the average digital photographer, color management theory can be mind-numbingly arcane, even though it is crucial to setting up an efficient and effective overall workflow. If you want to color manage properly, you have to assimilate a certain amount of theory or the whole process will fail to make any sense. This is where Eddie Tapp does an excellent job of simplifying the information as much as possible, presenting it in a logical order, and is able to pack a very thorough discussion of the topic in less than 150 pages - a real feat.

The book is laid out in an interesting fashion with text on the outside third of each page and the center section filled up with colorful pictures and screen shots. Some of it's eye candy, but that's what sells books these days I'm sure. Many of the screen shots and other illustrations are valuable though as they answer important questions regarding particular selections in critical software dialog boxes, and the explanation of terms and methods is very lucid and direct. The author does an excellent job of going deep where it's important while avoiding unneeded complexity for its own sake. There's a certain amount of technical heavy lifting that one has to do to become competent in this arena, but Eddie's made it as easy as any document I've seen. In addition, the appendix contains a highly useful excerpt from the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines and extensive additional resource listings.

I've read a LOT, really a lot, on this subject and what I was looking for was not a book like this. I wanted something that offered more theory, something that would help me understand what color models are all about and why they are different, why sRGB can't encompass the same wide gamut as Adobe RGB for example (instead of being told flat out that it just doesn't), and what does it mean that there are colors that can't be seen by humans. I guess that being a mathematician by training and a software engineer by practice, I was looking for something more than click here and press that. It's a slick beautifully produced book, but it's not what I was looking for.

Eddie Tapp is a great photographer who travels and gives practical inforamation in workshops. I have attended his workshops and so I wasn't reluctent to try his book. I am glad I did. It gave me the information I needed to correct my color management workflow.

Eddie Tapp's book is an easy to read and understand book on what can be a daunting subject. His easy going, personable style demystifies the subject and makes setting up your computer for better color mangement a breeze.

How do you make sure that the color you're seeing on your screen is what the rest of the world will see when you distribute your finished work? That is the question that Eddie Tapp attempts to answer in his latest book Practical Color Management.

Practical Color Management is divided into five chapters and one appendix. "The Search for Consistent Color," covers where the concept of color management came from and why it has evolved into what it is today.

"Understanding Key Color Management Concepts," explains the difference between calibration and profiling.

"Establishing a Color Management-Friendly Workflow," guides you through developing a efficient workflow.

"Three Stages of Color Management," describes breaking the basic color management into their three stages.

"Technically Speaking," brings in color expert Rick Lucas to explain in-depth color management concepts.

At first look, it almost seems that the approach will be too basic, but it builds quickly and will be of benefit to newcomer and professional alike.

Practical Color Management: Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography (Eddie Tapp on Digital Photogra) This book is the next best thing to being in a classroom. Color management is a huge undertaking for even the best of professionals, and this book is an excellent place to start. There are many books on color management, but this work by Eddie Tapp is truly outstanding!

Plenty of how-to books discuss color photography basics - but how many narrow the focus to assuring that color will retain uniform features when viewed across mediums and on different desktops? PRACTICAL COLOR MANAGEMENT is the key to assuring such continuity of quality, using simple language to provide solutions to common color challenges. Chapters tell how to calibrate devices, convert device output more effectively, prepare files for printing, and more. Plenty of color screen shots and examples emphasize the step-by-step technical explanations, which require no prior knowledge of either digital photography or color - or art - to prove accessible. General-interest library lending collections will find PRACTICAL COLOR MANAGEMENT a very popular pick, offering not only a more visual approach than most, but including easy instructions even novices can readily understand.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch