The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers eBook: Martin Evening: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Product Description

This is the eBook version of the printed book.

While Adobe Photoshop has long been their choice for editing digital photographs, many photographers want a more focused tool. That’s where Adobe Photoshop Lightroom comes in. Designed from the ground up with digital photographers in mind, Photoshop Lightroom offers powerful editing features in a streamlined interface that lets photographers import, sort, and organize images. This completely updated and expanded bestseller, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book, was also written with photographers in mind. Author Martin Evening describes features in Photoshop Lightroom 2 in detail from a photographer’s perspective. As an established commercial and fashion photographer, Martin knows first-hand what photographers need for an efficient workflow. He has also been working with Lightroom from the beginning, monitoring the product’s development and providing feedback on the public beta. As a result, Martin knows the software inside and out, from image selection to image editing to image management.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book contains 624 pages of comprehensive and detailed coverage of all aspects of Lightroom. In this book you’ll learn how to:

• Work efficiently with images shot in the raw or JPEG format
• Import photographs with ease and sort them according to your workflow
• Create and manage a personal image library
• Apply tonal adjustments to multiple images quickly
• Integrate Photoshop Lightroom with Adobe Photoshop
• Export images for print or Web as digital contact sheets or personal
portfolios

The book structure has been organized to match a typical Lightroom workflow. The introductory chapter provides an overview of all the main Lightroom features, showing how Lightroom 2 was used on a studio photo shoot that was specially shot to illustrate the book. The following chapters cover all the essentials, such as importing photos, working with the Library module, and managing the catalog database. The biggest section of the book is devoted to working with the Develop module and provides some unique insights into working with new features such as the localized adjustment tools. There is also a whole chapter devoted to image sharpening and another on integrating Lightroom and Photoshop, where you will learn how to devise the best workflow methods for working between these two programs. This is followed by a chapter on printing and a presentation chapter on the Slideshow and Web modules. Lastly, there are two appendix chapters. One offers a complete overview of the Lightroom 2 preference settings, while the other provides some in-depth explanations and background reading on how the Lightroom program works.

The book is richly illustrated, mostly using the author’s own photographs, and one of the nice features of this book is the way enlarged panel views are used throughout, making it easier for readers to follow the settings used in the various step-by-step examples. There are also lots of tips that will help you take your Lightroom techniques to an advanced level.

If you are looking for the most comprehensive coverage of Lightroom, written by an author who is closely involved with the development of the program, this is the book to get.

About the Author
Martin Evening is a London-based advertising and fashion photographer and noted expert in both photography and digital imaging. In addition to being a bestselling author, Martin is sought after for speaking and lecturing. He also works with the Photoshop and Lightroom engineering teams, consulting on new feature development and alpha and beta testing. He is one of the founding members of PixelGenius, a software design company producing automated production and creative plug-ins for Photoshop.

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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

Just the job 14 Sep 2008

By Mr. S. Crook

Format:Paperback

After a short preamble describing the whys and wherefores of LR the book quickly down to business with importing photos into LR, then on to catloging, correcting and printing following the usual photographers workflow. There's a short (but useful) section on geotagging photos, which actually has little to do with LR2 (at the moment), but it's becoming an important part of a photographers workflow.

It's an approach that works well and Evenings style is both informative and relaxed, but he never strays too far from the business at hand and isn't 'chatty'. The book is printed on good quality paper so the sample photographs and screen prints are clear and clearly illustrate the processes being described. They are almost all there for a purpose, and not just as eye candy.

It's a book you can both use as a reference and sit and read in a spare moment. If you're new to LR and looking for something to get you up and running, then this will be just the job and will probably still be useful in 6 or 12 months time when you're experienced with the UI. If you're an experienced user of LR v1, then it's probably not as useful as it'll be covering V1 features you're familiar with, but there's a lot of new stuff in LR v2 and I doubt you'll find it better described elsewhere.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Weighty and exhaustive or possibly just very heavy 3 Mar 2009

By STEFAN FLETCHER

This is the third magnum opus from Evening I have purchased, as my Adobe products have expanded and been updated. Each one is a doorstop with this book weighing in at about twice the weight and page count as the LR 1 book.

Definitely *the* reference book which exhaustively and exhaustingly covers everything you might possibly want to know about LR 2. Certainly not a 'how to' book, although tips are highlighted. Non-Mac and non-Canon users may be put off by his focus on these products, although options are provided.

The examples and visuals are clear. However, I find the writing a little tortuous and tiresome at points. Not a book you can read from start to finish despite its 'workflow' based structure, but it is the first reference book I reach for when I need to learn something.

Is is possible to write a how-to photography book in paperback format and perhaps save a few trees?

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Good, extensive guide to a complex program 1 July 2009

By Bob Margolis

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Lightroom might be less complex than Photoshop but it is still full of features. The default online help system is weak and a book like this enables a beginner to make good use of the program quickly. It also gives a more experienced user a valuable reference guide.
The book is not perfect (very few are) there are some typos and slips but very, very few for the size of the book.
It is true (see other reviews) that the illustrations are Mac-biased. This Windows user did not find this a problem. The text (usually) gives the differences between systems. The author states at one point that he runs Lightroom under Windows for some operations because of increased speed.
The organisation according to workflow will suit many users, particularly beginners. It is still possible to dip straight in to, say, the image editing part without reading all the image management part.
There is a lot of good advice to beginners in this book apart from the Lightroom-specific stuff. The author makes a very strong case for "shoot raw if you can" (more and more can) and for thinking through image management and keywording from the start.
The author makes it clear that for some photography (beauty is one) Lightroom is not a complete alternative to layer-capable programs like Photoshop. For those of us who use Photoshop, the material on using the two together smoothly is invaluable.
For beginners and experienced users alike, the material on the Lightroom Print module will make life a lot easier. The Print module is, to some of us, the jewel in Lightroom's crown. It is very flexible and adaptable which means a well-written guide to how to get the best out of it is needed. This book provides it.