In an interview with George Jardine, renowned portrait photographer Gregory Heisler remarked, "the problem with digital photography is that people don't know what they don't know." It's still a relatively new field, and alot of misinformation gets passed along despite people's best intentions. When Heisler wanted to get a handle on digital, he went to a D-65 workshop with Seth Resnick & Jamie Spritzer (in fact, Canon sends many of their Explorers of Light to learn digital at D-65).
With this book, a wider audience is able to learn the ins-and-outs of digital photography from pioneers in the field. What makes Resnick & Spritzer's book unique among the competition is that is is built around establishing a true end-to-end digital workflow, from capture to asset management to output and archiving. Whether you're a working professional or an ardent shutterbug, this book shows you effective organizational and artistic techniques. The blessing and curse of digital is the sheer volume of files one can generate; this book shows the path to get the most of of one's time in front of the computer, freeing the photographer to spend more time shooting.
Behind everything is a solid understanding of state-of-the-art digital technology, with clear and concise explanations why one should do things a certain way over another. In addition, multiple approaches are illustrated to address the different needs of different photographers; for example, the book shows how to set up the Library and Catalog features for managing external drives in a shared environment or laptops that might be synced with desktops.
Thankfully, this book is not one of those encyclopedias that tries to explain every feature in Lightroom in exhaustive detail. While there's more than enough instruction on using the various settings in the Develop Module, proofing for prints, etc., the viewpoint is always from the perspective of a photographer working on files from a shoot, not taking one picture and manipulating it to death with no context (as so many Photoshop books are). For that reason, this book is actually one you can read from beginning to end, as opposed to just pulling off the shelf and using the Index when you have a question (though it's great for that, too). The tone is concise, comprehensible, and professional (thankfully, without the relentless puns and lame jokes that define who-know-who's books).
For all my friends who pick up digital photography and seek my help, I always try to help them develop good work habits and a fundamental understanding of optimizing their files, both during capture and subsequent processing, rather than try to teach them random Photoshop tricks. Resnick & Spritzer's book is truly remarkable in that it is the first I've seen to really teach a workflow in the context of being a photographer, rather than just illustrating Lightroom's feature set. You'll learn all of Lightroom features, but you'll be learning WHY to use them, in addition to HOW (which seems to be the only part most books address). I can't recommend this book highly enough, as I think it's the best place to start understanding digital as a photographer. Even if you've been using Photoshop for years and Lightroom since the Beta version, read this book cover-to-cover and your time behind the computer will be much more productive!
