Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

With a mantra like “There are no bad originals, only bad Photoshop operators,” you know best-selling author Dan Margulis is serious about exposing people to the magic of Photoshop. Nowhere is that magic more apparent than in its LAB color processing capabilities, which can make even the subtle canyon colors of rock, sand, and dirt come to vivid life. However, you may be wary of taming the complex beast. Here’s your guide! In these pages, Dan shows that you can derive enormous benefits from just a few simple tools and techniques. He also demonstrates that you can take these techniques as far as you wish, employing the power-user features he describes in later chapters. Starting with canyons and progressing to faces, you will see just how quickly you can begin improving your images by following the “recipes” included here. Each chapter includes a sidebar with review questions and exercises as well as a “Closer Look” section that examines some of the principles behind the techniques. A CD includes exercise files.

About the Author

Dan Margulis is known as "the experts' expert on the logical and effective ways to make any image look its best" (Design Tools Monthly) and "the father of digital prepress" (Scott Kelby). In 2001, he was one of the first three individuals—and the only writer—to be named as a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. In announcing this election, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals said, "Dan's ability to reduce complicated concepts to words that users can understand and his insistence on dealing with real-world relevance have made him today's most influential voice in color reproduction."

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Peachpit Press (August 18, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321356780
• ISBN-13: 978-0321356789
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,066 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

175 of 178 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Using curves in LAB color space to increase color variability, September 23, 2005

By	H. Domke (New Bloomfield, MO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace" by Dan Margulis is definitely worth reading and is most entertaining. I don't agree that it is "the most revolutionary book on digital imaging ever written" and it is certainly not a comprehensive look at Photoshop CS2. If you want comprehensive, get the gold standard: "Real World Photoshop CS2.

But there are some interesting gems buried in here that might improve your digital output. To me the biggest discovery was the idea of using curves in LAB color space to increase color variability. We are not just talking saturation here, but rather color separation. His explanation for why we want this is that cameras lack the sense of simultaneous contrast common to most human beings. When we see a lot of similar colors in close proximity, we break them apart.  He shows how we can do that in Photoshop. It makes a big difference on some images.

His writing style is quirky, intelligent and often funny. That helps for such complex ideas. I think this book should only by used by advanced readers.

He relishes taking positions that are against the mainstream. For example, he argues that for photographic images high-bit editing is worthless.  Likewise, he does not illustrate the use of Adjustment Layers or Layer Masks which are part of the standard workflow for most advanced users.

What is so wonderful about all his ideas, which go against the current accepted wisdom, is that he makes you question what you are doing. He presents his arguments using concise logic. It made me frequently pause and question my workflow.

Bottom line: This book should be at the top of the reading stack for Advanced Photoshop users. Learning how to increase color variability alone makes it worthwhile.

Henry Domke.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent, Inexpensive, Comprehensive 360 Page Book, November 12, 2005

By	Tony in SF (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

Photoshop LAB Color is targeted at photo editing/correction using a method that is either completely unknown to most Photoshop users, or is at least only slightly familiar. If you think you already know all about LAB, don't buy this book. If you know nothing about LAB and you use Photoshop as your photo editor, this book will be a revelation to you. It's chock-full of excellent info and real-world examples of problem-photo corrections using LAB, and it explains in detail why LAB is often a better color space to work in than RBG (or CMYK).

Also, this isn't an absolute beginner's book but it doesn't pretend to be, and warns you that this can be a subject that requires a lot of thought to grasp completely.

Here are a few pluses and minuses as I see this book:

Positives:
1. The author has a sense of humor, and most of the time he's funny. This is well-balanced and the book doesn't rely heavily on humor to get you through it. If you prefer dry manuals full of bland statistics and dusty white-page explanations on theory and history, though, this ain't a book for you.

2. IMO this book is well-organized. The author starts with the basic concepts of LAB color, using simple changes to photos using LAB and shows you the differences between changes to the same photo using the RGB and CMYK color spaces. As the book progresses, the examples of problems become more and more complex so the solutions also become more complex.

3. The author uses lots of photos to show you what he's talking about, and they often take up lots of room on the pages. This book is about photo editing in LAB color, so this shouldn't be a big surprise to most people, and it's a definite benefit to SEE what the author is talking about.

4. If you are relatively new to Photoshop, there are many excellent techniques the author uses in conjunction with LAB that apply to good Photoshop editing in general, and you'll get a lot out of this book even if LAB color makes your head spin.

5. The book comes with a CD full of the original (unaltered) photos the author used in the book. This is cool, because you can take the photos into Photoshop and try them out yourself using LAB corrections. Of course, it's great to have the CD but if you don't sit in front of a computer while you read (I've read this book often on the bus to and from work every day) the pics in this book are invaluable as examples.

6. LAB Color is densely packed, but the type-face is large enough that you won't destroy your vision trying to read it. It will definitely take you a while to get through it, but it'll be very much worth your time.

7. Compared to the price of many other Photoshop books out there, this one is cheap and more than worth the price for what it offers.


Slightly Negatives:
1. The Forward and author's Intro are unnecessarily long and self-congratulatory, but you can decide that for yourself and skip a few pages if they bore you. I skimmed through both, got the gist of what they were saying, and moved on to Chapter 1. Not a big deal.

2. Example photos occasionally end up on different pages than the text that refers to those photos. It isn't always the case, and the problem is easily solved by turning back or forward a page or two. Sometimes irritating, but big deal!

Err, that's all I could think of, because I found this book to be very valuable overall. This one is definitely worth your time and money!

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Indispensable Technical Reference, April 17, 2006

By	F. M. Bobbitt - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Developed in 1976, the LAB color space is a means to expedite color conversions to an industry standard. Photoshop gets LAB values from pantone, Inc., that enable it to construct the PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors that are the defacto standard in the graphics industry.

"Photoshop LAB Color" by Dan Margulis is a highly technical work that can be intimidating at first. However, if you work with digital images in Photoshop or other similar software that support the LAB color space, then I believe this book is indispensible for increasing your understanding of how to make superior color corrections that are not otherwise possible using RGB alone.

Note that this book is not intended for Photoshop Elements users because Elements does not support the LAB color space.

Although the book can be challenging, Mr. Margulis has thoughtfully organized it so that both novice and expert can and will benefit from using the LAB color space.

The first six chapters of the book are organized so that the first half of each chapter can be used by those who are not yet expert Photoshop users. He skips most of the technical jargon, describing only the necessary steps to use the techniques. In chapter one, for example, learn to use the LAB color space with surprising results in just a few easy steps.

The second half of the first six chapters take the reader into more technical discussions for a greater understanding of the use of colors and the LAB color space.

Chapters seven through sixteen are more advanced, and I would recommend that you be comfortable with using most of the common editing features of Photoshop before delving into this part of the book. If you're not yet ready for the advanced techniques after finishing chapter six, then set the book aside and return to it later.

To reap all of the benefits of using the LAB color space, however, you will need to put on your virtual SCUBA gear and explore the mysterious depths of LAB. The journey will be challenging, but the results will be well worth the effort.

As other reviewers have pointed out, you will most likely need to re-read or at least review this book more than once to become proficient and to understand the technical aspects of the LAB color space.

Using the LAB color space will not work for every image. But for those images for which it is appropriate, it will provide fast color correction with results that can be superior to using RGB and in many cases that would otherwise not be possible to achieve.

I would not recommend this book to Photoshop users who do not yet understand the functions of curves and channels.

Included with the book is a CD with all of the images used in the book's tutorials organized by chapter. Use the images to follow along with Mr. Margulis as he introduces you to LAB.

Enjoy.