The Digital Photography Workflow Handbook [Hardcover]

While titled as a book that emphasizes photography workflow, this book might be better characterized as an introduction to raw image processing using Photoshop. There are also brief sections on using "All-in-One Workflow tools Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom, but the main focus of the book is digital dark room exercises using Photoshop. Those who use Elements or other image processing software may have to search through menu commands in those programs to execute functions equivalent to those in Photoshop. Some image editing tools discussed in the book will probably not be available if you're not using Photoshop.

For these authors, "workflow" is the digital darkroom processing that creates a presentation quality image from a raw captured image.

This is not a book on photo composition. While there are many digital photos in the book, they are used as examples in image manipulation within Photoshop. To gain the maximum value from this book, it should be used with your raw images on your computer that has Photoshop installed. The descriptions of workflow within Photoshop are applicable for versions CS2-CS5, though less "translation" will need to be done for CS4 and CS5.

There are some additional topics covered:
Color Management
Multishot techniques including stitching, increasing depth of field, and increasing dynamic range
Turning color into black and white
Printing
Data management and backup

These additional topics are lightly covered, and for the interested reader, a book that focuses on just that topic might be a better choice

The backup section is fairly complete, and emphasizes the importance of off-site backups. Drobo devices are mentioned, they are a reliable expandable hard drive enclosure that can be networked. Online backup is not mentioned, there are many reliable online vendors that will back up terabytes of data for pennies a day, and one doesn't have to be reminded to back up the data, it happens automatically.

The writing is lucid, the illustrations are clear. There is an excellent resource section which includes web-based resources, as well as a seven page index. The authors have extensive experience explaining digital photography, their love of the subject shows in every page. For the beginner or intermediate photographer who'd like to increase their skill at digital image processing, this book is an excellent resource. Recommended.

Product Description

Juergen Gulbins has extensive experience in writing, technology, desktop publishing, designing high-end document archival systems, and digital photography. He is a prolific author who has written and translated books on topics such as CAD, Unix, DTP, typography, Internet, document management, Linux, and various aspects of digital photography. He has been a passionate photographer most of his life.Uwe Steinmueller, a native of Germany, has been a photographer since 1973. His first exhibitions were in 1978 in Bremen, Germany with photos from Venice, South Tirol, Germany, and France. He shares a joint copyright with his wife Bettina. Uwe moved to California in 1997 and began working seriously in digital photography in 1999. He currently lives and works in San Jose. He has written a number of books, two of which won the prestigious German "Fotobuchpreis" award two years in a row, in 2004 and 2005. Uwe is the man behind outbackphoto.com, a popular website covering quality outdoor photography using digital cameras.

Features