Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (Paperback)

~ Dan Margulis (Author) "Let there be light, the Lord said, and since then it's been nothing but headaches for those of us interested in quality color printing..." (more)
Key Phrases: prescreened originals, other colorspaces, dot gain setting, Channel Mixer, Color Picker, Grand Canyon (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Plenty of books cover all things Photoshop, but Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction is probably one of the few that ought to be required reading. Filled with clear text and color images, this new edition of the classic color usage guide stands out among its peers. Updated to reflect changes in Photoshop since the previous edition, nearly half the material is either new or has been rewritten. Color correction itself hasn't changed, but the way it's done and the need for doing it certainly have.

The book contains 17 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of correction and image reproduction: colorspaces, resolution, luminosity, separation, channels, and much more. Each chapter is worthy of study, and all are interesting. While not a step-by-step tutorial guide, the text is written so that the driving idea behind each technique--in addition to a demonstration of it--is explained, allowing the reader to apply what is learned to his or her own work.

For the first time, this book includes a CD-ROM. While not exactly overflowing with content, it does include images from the book that anxiously await color correction, as well as some chapters that were in earlier editions of the book but are not present in this one. There is also an important chapter on moving from a pre-version 5 Photoshop to version 6 (a significant jump).

The book doesn't try to be a Photoshop all-inclusive encyclopedia. Instead, it focuses on one aspect of the tool. Fortunately, since color correction is probably the most important, complex, and misunderstood area of digital imaging, Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction excels at explaining and exploring the process behind the curtain, and the right and wrong way to adjust the color of images. --Mike Caputo

Product Description

An electronic prepress master reveals how to get the most out of Photoshop

Renowned among graphic design professionals for his technical grounding and ability to clearly explain difficult principles and techniques, Dan Margulis has updated his bestselling book, Professional Photoshop 5, to help readers quickly master Photoshop 6 and learn how to take full advantage of its latest tools and capabilities. Rather than focusing on program features, Dan Margulis builds on a solid foundation of classic design concepts and skills. This new edition has been substantially expanded to include coverage of issues surrounding image handling for devices other than offset printers, such as final output on desktop color printers, high-volume copiers, and large-format printers for outdoor displays.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (November 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471403997
• ISBN-13: 978-0471403999
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #150,393 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #2 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Reference

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, February 8, 2001

By	B. Kennedy (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I own several PS instructional books, and this is the first that tackles color-correction in a serious way. Call me crazy, but I read through it like a novel, albeit with a highlighter, as suggested by Norman Sanders' review.

This is not for the beginner learning PS -- Adobe's PS Classroom in a Book is good for that. Likewise, it is not for a person using PS LE or Photo Deluxe, which do not support all of the pre-press features of the full version. Instead, like Bert Monroy's "Photorealistic Techniques with PS & Illustrator," and Biedny, Moody, and Monroy's "PS Channel Chops," this is a book for someone who knows his way around PS, but realizes there is still lots to learn. This is a book that will put hair on your chest.

Margulis essentially shows how to get the best possible corrected color and contrast for a published image. The first two or three chapters of the book are about tweaking the CMYK curves, reading the numbers from PS's info palette. This is the part he calls "monkey work," the correction by the numbers. Of course, it is the basis for all color correction and image improvement. Margulis then goes further, including an entire chapter on the subject of how dot gain settings affect output, for example. His explanation of sharpening -- also an entire chapter -- is excellent. He has a chapter devoted to RGB versus CMY curves, a whole chapter about the importance of the black channel, a chapter about Lab mode corrections, and a chapter or two about adding depth and detail to images by adding contrast to the "unwanted color" (i.e., the cyan plate for a red object). He explains how and when to use channel operations to give images more snap, depth, and detail. And he ties everything together as the book goes along, explaining how to correct specific problems, with before and after illustrations. The differences can be quite subtle -- but it is those subtleties that give the final image a more professional, polished look. And, as often as not, the differences can be quite dramatic.

Margulis is clearly a little full of himself -- see Stephen Gracey's note about his "caustic criticism of others in his field." But he's convinced that sometimes the "flavor of the day" is wrong, mostly about ICC tagging of documents and the problems with color calibration hardware and software. He's probably right. This doesn't get in the way of the numerous useful techniques detailed in this book, and you can skip some of his tirade sections if you want.

One note -- this is not a book just for pre-press professionals or people who use a CMYK workflow. But it will clearly help them most. Even so, anyone who wants to get the best quality printed or on-screen image can benefit from the techniques in this book. It will help photographers printing high-quality digital images on RGB desktop inkjet printers, or advertisers or internet professionals who must prepare images to be posted to the web. Yes, Margulis can occasionally gloss over a point he assumes "anyone" would understand, but if you stick with it the book, you'll see how everything fits together. Margulis *realizes* that good color correction is more art than science. He aims to give the reader the tools and some inspiration to tackle the art and science of color correction, and he succeeds. On several occasions, I found myself thinking, "Hey, I never thought about doing that!"

Highly recommended; not necessarily for the beginner, though.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb resource for getting proper color output, May 9, 2001

By	Don Kenny (USA) - See all my reviews

This is one of the 2 or 3 most useful Photoshop books available today. Other books just basically cover tips and techniques. This book specifically targets proper color output.

Dan Margulis describes how to effectively color balance and adjust contrast without loss of detail. Chapter 4 is probably worth the price of the book alone. In it, Margulis describes a very effective sharpening technique which does not produce the usual "halo" effect if you try to oversharpen.

Margulis accomplishes all sorts of wonderful image enhancements without the use of tricky selections or masking. He also covers a radically different method of moving between RGB, CMYK, and/or LAB modes to get the best possible image quality.

If you already feel somewhat comfortable with some of Photoshop's capabilities, but you just aren't getting the printout "punch" you'd otherwise expect, this book is highly recommended.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Got Over My CMYK Phobia, February 12, 2001

By	"indeepthought" (Kent, WA United States) - See all my reviews

I have purchased several photoshop books over the past year with mixed results. Most of them were "Wow look what I can do" crap showing off silly tricks I could have grabbed off an online tutorial. Thankfully, this book is not in that category. Not only are there no "Gee whiz I can make a toilet look like polka dot glass " sections, but the author helped dip[eled some of the misinformation I got reading that other crap. I too was intimidated by other reviews at first, but I am glad I ignored them. The book also reads well, although some may find the author a little egotisitical ( I think he is kind of cool myself). If you can only own one photoshop book, this is the one to buy. You can learn parlor tricks online for free, but this information is next to impossible to come buy in book form.