Customer Reviews

Total Digital Photography: The Shoot to Print Workflow Handbook

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book delivers on the promises made on it's back cover. It is well-written, well-organized, with up-to-date information. It's greatest strength comes from the "insider's view" it gives of professional digital photography. Readers who are not professionals can easily skip the extra information about goals such as selling photographs through the web. I read the book cover to cover, so I was sometimes annoyed when some points were repeated - but this is of course an asset for the reader who uses the book as a reference, who needs to get needed information from a given chapter, without undue cross-referencing between chapters. I would have liked more information on best practices for common image editing problems like altering exposure or color balance. Lots of well-reproduced color photographs - with interesting content as well.

I'm a serious amateur photograph who made the switch to digital after 20 years of shooting film. This book really helped to clear up a lot of the confusion I was having about the flow of work from the point of taking a digital photograph to having something you can hang on your wall.

This book is primarily aimed at professional photographers who work in studios or shooting weddings and the like, but there is much in it for the amateur looking to get a better understanding how to work with a digital image. I found the chapters on digital photo processing, storage and backup, and image editing to be especially helpful and informative.

By breaking down the overall process into a series of discrete steps, the authors definitely made the book more readable and useful as a reference source.

This isn't a book about a specific piece of software or a single approach to capturing an image, but rather a somewhat philosophical examination of the basic process of digital photography from before you shoot the image until you have a finished print. It is not, however, devoid of practical applications and advice. On the contrary, the authors do a very good job at balancing the philosophical with the practical at every stage. As a result, I felt like I came away with a much deeper understanding of the overall process.

I'd highly recommend this book to any serious amateur looking for a complete discription of how to capture, store, edit, and print digital photographs.

As a serious photographer just now getting into digital, this book has been a godsend, clearly explaining and providing useful context to the often daunting new world of digital workflow issues. The all-color approach with plenty of photographic examples is an added, eminently useful benefit. I'm a Mac-based guy, but this book is platform-agnostic. Bottom line: When it comes to real world digital photo issues, Timacheff and Karlins cover it all beautifully.

I was looking for a book to better understand how to maintain an effective workflow from start to finish without wasting time at each stage. Key for me was getting a better understanding what was necessary at each stage (procedures and tools to accomplish them) vs. what was optional or simply unnecessary. This book did an excellent job of that. It was quite readable, which I did over a couple of weeks time in many short reading sessions. While the book tries to deliberately avoid being another Photoshop book and tries to be balanced, presenting comparable aspects of other programs, it does describe key actions where Photoshop excels.

I have been using this book in teaching photography workshops for about three months. My students love it because it helps them understand the method and process of digital photography. It's been great for helping beginning and intermediate photographers understand the process of photography, especially how to get a digital final from an idea to either print or on the web. For advanced photographers and professionals, it's great especially for those who are transitioning from film to digital. It's written in conversational language, but it's got lots of detail and it does a lot to "de-mystify" the concept of workflow. The only suggest I'd really have for second editions would be to add a center section with photos ... there are lots of great photos, but it would be nice to critique them side-by-side.

Most of the book is on post-processing. This book assumes that you already have some idea of how to work your camera. Instead of really telling you how to do things, it focuses on how you can make things more easy on yourself.

It discusses the preparation, the shoot itself and post-production of the images. It doesn't tell you how to shoot perfectly, because in many conditions this just isn't possible. It does discuss how you can deal with those circumstances, making them work for you instead of you work for them all the time. It's general in its guidelines, but in-depth enough to show you how to do things for yourself.

This book assumes that you're a bit creative (which you really are, don't worry) and then helps you develop this creativity.

There's a lot in there, too much to put in here. (And it's all highly organised and easy to read.)

We own a full-service photography studio in the Midwest. Each holiday season, we give ourselves a book or books on photography. This year, we decided to get two books by the same author(s): Total Digital Photography and Digital Sports Photography. We bought these after reading the reviews and looking at them at a local bookstore.

We converted from film to digital about three years ago, and workflow has been an issue for us as we've expanded and grown our studio, and dealt with all the factors involved with adding computers, archiving, etc. We do commercial, sports, and portrait photography so these books were right in-line with what we were doing.

Normally we have not written reviews on books in the past, but we felt it only fair to give these books a synopsis that we think more accurately matches the audience for which they are intended - and not all the reviews do that.

Reading the other reviews of these books, most of the complaints seemed nit-picky and not very substantial, and the overall impression was positive. A few of the technical points are well-taken, but seem a bit out of proportion to the overall spirit and gist of the books - which aren't intended to be deep technical works. We've used the books now for a bit more than a month, and we've found them both to be, for the most part, technically accurate, well-written, and very helpful for our work.

A few of the reviewers questioned the authors' use of fencing images, but we found these to be an interesting way to take an unusual and interesting subject, describe personal experience, and apply it to a variety of sports. And the images of all types were well done - good examples, well-composed, and applicable to a variety of photographers. We liked the use of a wide variety of sports photogrpahers' images in the sports book.

We must point out that these books aren't meant to be coffee-table books. One reviewer said many images are like snapshots. We disagree - they are like standard, everyday professional shots we might take, and aren't meant to be "haute" art photos. A few are of this caliber, but it's clear the authors' are attempting to reach ordinary photography enthusiasts and working professionals, not gallery artists.

One of the things we liked most was how personal and readable the books are - way more than just a reference where you'd read a snippet or two from various pages. These books have helped us understand digital photography much more deeply, and put into place a workflow and method for managing our studio more efficiently and profitably. We recommend the book to anyone seriously interested in photography as a regular pursuit-whether you're in it for the money or just as an active pursuit.

The information in this book is a must have for anyone who takes more than just a few snapshots. Workflow is a major consideration for digital photography and this book helps you make sence out of it.

Trying to find a good book on digital workflow, I read the other reviews posted here. After reading the book, I tend to agree with the one reviewer that says the best picture is the cover. If several shots of fencers in action shot under existing light is your cup of tea, then this is your book. When explaining the rule of thirds, the author's sample grid is skewed so far right that that it's almost the rule of halves. The author spends an inordinate amount of time covering fencing, definitely a difficult sport to shoot given the speed and constraints, but too much of the book is dedicated to this subject making it seem too one-dimensional. Most of the other shots are uninspired shots, many of which seem vacation snapshot quality.

As for the text, more time should be spent on the post capture portion. While the author goes into monitor profiles, archival and printing, not enough time is spent on these steps which are just as important to final printing as the image capture itself. Rather than trying to be generic with the type of camera, the author overly uses his example of Canon 10D which dates the text immediately. The steps outlined are useful enough until the next generation software becomes available, don't date yourself immediately by mentioning cameras that become obsolete immediately after publication. The author misses one key point in editing: Never edit the original! Always make a copy since you can never go back to what the original shot looked like. This is especially critical with JPEG since every save of the file causes further loss of data with compression.

Don't wasted you money this book is Boring, no updated, the quality of the picture inseide the book are really bad (the only good picture is the one in the cover). any intersting content inside the book.