Professional Digital Photography is the first professional's guide to digital imaging, from capture all the way to print or Web! Top graphic arts consultants Bill Erickson and Frank Romano cover it all, start to finish. Whether you're a photographer, digital publisher, designer, pre-press specialist, printer, or Web professional, this book delivers the no-compromise answers, techniques, and solutions you need right now!
From the Inside Flap
INTRODUCTION
We cannot overestimate the importance of pictures and the roles they play in society-- how the evolution of picture taking has influenced, even shaped, life as we know it. Why is an image worth a thousand words? Think how the art and science of photography is being changed and enhanced by the ability to scan, store, and print pictures, and how networked computers allow us to put them any place, on anything, any time... almost.
The camera you have now works fine; you can even get prints in an hour in four sizes if you want to. Why do you need or even care about digital anyway? Film works; it works well. "Photographic quality" has long been considered the ultimate standard. Where does digital fit and what advantages does it offer?
Digital revolution has become digital evolution. We're past the "gee whiz" phase; now what do we do with it? What can we do with it?
A lot happens when you push the button and someone else does the rest. Conventional photography deals with the basic science of how objects, light, cameras, film, chemistry, and photo paper all conspire together to stop time and put it on something we can pass around or put on the wall. This book deals with advances in photography in the light of the emergence of digital technology.
You can get a scanner that does 4800 dpi, and an inkjet printer that prints 1200 dpi, free with the PC you buy down the street. What does that mean and what is the connection to photography? Well, you have most of your own photo publishing system. How does the photo get from paper or film to digital output, and what is digital anyway? How do you get pictures from film to computer and how do you take a picture without using film at all? We'll tell you.
The ideas behind making a photo print in Time magazine, putting an image into a Powerpoint sales presentation, or printing a poster for the entrance of a gallery for next week's opening are pretty much the same. You can even get rid of a pimple, an ex-husband, and annoying power lines in the process, and make the grass look greener, too.
Why is the fisherman's sweater you bought from L.L. Bean more of a teal than the turquoise it is in the catalog, why is it that the TVs at Sears never match, and why is the print you got from that free inkjet printer a whole lot different than the one you saw on the monitor? We'll tell you.
Images take up a lot of space and once you've got them you'll want to send them places. What do you do when you need to find some you took the other week and send them out fast. Soon you'll be knee deep into storing, sorting, searching, transmitting, and receiving images. We'll even give you the photographic low-down on databases, networks, platforms, and the ubiquitous Internet.
The power of the press belongs to those who have one. Now just about everyone has one and they're all a little different. How do you get images out of the computer and onto paper, or film, or cloth, or snowboards. We'll tell you why WYSIWYG isn't and what you can and cannot do about it.
A little technology can be a dangerous thing-- both boon and bane. Where do things appear to be headed and how much of it do you even want to deal with? We'll tell you.
See all Editorial Reviews
