Digital Photography Expert Techniques

Book Description

Whether you're a new photographer or an experienced pro, this book will guide you through the labyrinth of options and choices you face from the moment you see a photo opportunity to the time you share your final results. And it will help you minimize the time needed to fix your mistakes along the way.

Through step-by-step procedures based on years of experience, professional photographer Ken Milburn describes a complete workflow sequence that begins with essential equipment and preparation, takes you through detailed editing techniques, and ends with your finished images looking the way you want, ready to be shown to the world.

This completely revised edition of Milburn's original bestseller teaches you everything you need to do before, during, and after the editing process.

• Be prepared with the right equipment
• Get the basic shots right
• Organize your photos and find the gems
• Make reversible adjustments
• Refine your images with care
• Use special effects cautiously and tastefully
• Publish and share your images effectively

You'll also learn advanced techniques with Photoshop CS2 and Photoshop Elements, though this isn' t a typical Photoshop how-to book. Milburn's workflow strategy ensures that high-production jobs are done professionally with a minimum of frustration. With Digital Photography: Expert Techniques, you'll become a better (and more profitable) photographer.

Reviews From AMAZON.COM

Professional-level extended workflow advice for serious photographers

The following comments refer to the Second Edition of this book, printed in October 2006.

We're awash in average books on "digital photography" and "Photoshop;" this one is a cut above - way above.

Few dispute that Adobe Photoshop is the industry-leading photo editing software tool (at least at the moment), and most serious hobbyists or professional photographers use it at the core of their image processing workflow. But for those who produce a lot of images, the task of efficiently and effectively sorting, preparing, and delivering them to clients has taken on a whole new perspective. Hence, this author's construct of a comprehensive workflow that starts before shooting and ends well after delivery.

While choices abound in hardware and software tools and methods for producing high quality images, the author lays out concise recommendations in eminently readable style. The steps are: conduct the shoot, use Adobe Bridge to winnow the shoot and apply metadata, do raw conversion, optimize in Photoshop using nondestructive techniques, and deliver the product in an appropriate medium. (He also mentions digital asset management and archival storage, but refers to Peter Krogh's definitive book on the subject for comprehensive coverage.) The trick of course is learning to do all these things well and quickly and getting on with business...and this book has real potential for helping you do that.

Very few authors have the ability to discuss complex subjects with clear, open, readable style; Ken Milburn does that very well indeed. Much more than a rehash of a Photoshop owner's manual, this book provides a well-crafted roadmap for creating and delivering a large number of very high quality digital images quickly and professionally. For the serious hobbyist or pro looking to streamline his or her digital photographic work methods, this book is highly recommended.

Poor quality photographs mar book that otherwise might be useful

Is this guy really a pro? I found many of the photographs in this book to be poorly composed or just generally a boring photo. The suggested alterations seems to just be for the point of demonstrating what you can do. Is the author really that short on good photographs that he wants to recompose or enhance?

I wish I had seen this book in the store before putting it on my wish list. I would suggest looking elsewhere for a book with better examples.