The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing Review

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The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing ReviewHello. I am primarily an (amateur) landscape photographer as you may discern if you look at my Flickr gallery: [...]
I am also interested in night photography - particularly of the night sky. So it is not a surprise that the cover of the book would have been enough to capture my attention.
I pre-ordered my copy of The Photoshop Darkroom in June, 2009. It was a long wait and worth it.
I have several other books on Photoshop and this one beats them all in clarity and usefulness by a wide margin. Thankfully this book is NOT an exhaustive description of all of the features and nuances of Photoshop. A book that attempted to cover "all things Photoshop" would be thousands of pages long and filled with lots of really useless and boring information.
No, the authors: Harold and Phyllis Davis have instead taken a laser-like focus on about a dozen very useful techniques that are effective in producing pleasing results. The techniques are illustrated with full color, step by step images from Harold's own photographs. The quality of the illustrations is crucial to understanding the processes and the images in this book score very high on clarity [unlike several other books I have].
The steps for each process are clearly numbered, illustrated and labeled. And though the examples are from a Mac, I have no trouble following along with my older Photoshop version on a PC.
Is this book for you? Well, let me ask you these questions:
Would you like to make your photographs more appealing? More like the way you saw them? More like art? Something altogether different? The techniques and processes described allow all of these approaches.
* Do you use burn and dodge to darken and lighten? The Davis's will show you a far better way!
* Do you shoot JPG because you're afraid of RAW? Find out why RAW is superior and what you're missing?
* Ever thought about scanning or lighting small items at home? A clever, cheap and effective method is described in the beginning of the book.
* Would you like to manipulate or correct the color in your images cleanly? LAB mode may be your panacea and it's explained in this book.
* Do you use software for High Dynamic Range photos (or the built in HDR in Photoshop?) Learn why you may get far more delectable results by using a *SINGLE* RAW image. If you must use multiple images you'll learn how to blend them by hand to get more pleasing and natural looking results.
* Ever thought about capturing the night sky - as illustrated by the cover on the book? In The Photoshop Darkroom are copious tips both for shooting and then for processing night sky images. If you decide to pursue this passion further I understand that there is a Night Photography book in the works.
* Want to produce "Ansel Adams" quality black and white? This book explains how to get the most out of an image - and why standard "black and white conversion" options are not your friend.
Want to try to do the steps in the book using the actual images - thoughtfully the authors have provided a website for that, too!
In addition to all the great tips and illustrations this book has three important components that make it useful as a reference volume: A good table of contents, a Glossary and a complete and effective Index.
Is there anything wrong with the book? Well, not really, but I suppose there is one minor nit.
There are no page numbers on the many full page illustrations. Sometimes there is a run of 7 or 8 pages without numbers on them and most of the major sections start on un-numbered pages. I told you it was a nit!
The plethora of eye popping photos tend to make me pay more attention to the images than the text... but I really can't blame the authors for that, can I? ;-)
I should disclose that I have been a student in two of Harold's Night Photography Workshop classes and I like the guy for his talent, wit and wisdom which come through marvelously in the book.
This is a MUST BUY book.The Photoshop Darkroom: Creative Digital Post-Processing Overview
The Photoshop Darkroom offers limitless possibilities for photographers looking for jaw-dropping results, using powerful and innovative creative post-processing techniques. If you want folks to ask "How did you do that?" then this is the book for you!

The images in The Photoshop Darkroom will inspire you and help you unleash your creative potential. You'll learn to view your own digital photography with new eyes.

Step-by-step directions show you real-world examples of how to achieve the results you want from your photography and post-processing.

*Learn how to work with RAW image files

*Understand the Photoshop darkroom workflow

*Multi-process RAW files

*Extend the dynamic range of your photographs

*Create High Dynamic Range (HDR) images by hand

*Create stunning black and white imagery with Photoshop

*Use layers and masking for compositing

*Create striking color effects using LAB color
--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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