New Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing [Paperback]

Very good for specific things.
I bought this because I have an Epson printer and wanted to prepare images in the best way possible for printing on it. This is my final stage after raw capture and editing in Photoshop.
The basic information about the inkjet printing process is very good and applies whatever printer you own. It explains the difference between pixels per inch and dots per inch very well and everyone who prints their own images needs to understand this (some don't). Colour management is also discussed well.
The general chapters are useful and are well covered, with fewer plugs for Epson products, in other books. If you don't have other books, there is lots of solid advice about taking and editing pictures.
The core of the book (for me) is the part on sizing and sharpening for printing. Here, the detailed advice applies to Epson printers (with their multiples of 360 dots per inch) but the principles apply to all inkjet printers. If you don't use an Epson printer, you would have to read this information together with your printer manual.
Sheppard offers one controversial piece of advice, which I summarise as "print early, print often". (He denies that he is trying to boost Epson paper sales.) He has a point. It is very difficult (not impossible) to judge correct print sharpening on screen.
If you use a good quality proofing paper (Permajet's Matt Proofing is just one example) proof prints are not too expensive and could save an expensive mistake on a high price art paper.
The Epson plugging will put some readers off. This is a shame, they should look past the plugs to the sound advice.
The samples of work from four professional photographers are illuminating too.

Like many people these days, I am a keen amateur photographer with a DSLR capable of many megapixels. I have learnt a lot in the last few years about taking a good photo and how to process that raw photo using Photoshop CS3 and more recently Lightroom 2. I needed to find out more about 'known unknowns' such as sharpening and why a print looks different to the image on a monitor; and have subsequently found 'unknown unknowns' such as edge burning. This book has provided key information about making optimal images and prints which I have not found in any other books and RS explains things very clearly with specific settings to try out in PS and LR2.

I agree with most of the points made by previous reviewers, but I will add a few observations of my own.

- I think it is perfectly justified that RS includes what makes a good photo as this is integral to achieving a good print at the end of your workflow.
- I already knew about monitor calibration and many of the suggestions for how to take a good picture. However, RS includes lots of print specific hints to illustrate many of the suggestions which are worth knowing in a print context
- RS really knows his stuff and explains some high end concepts (for me anyway) such as sharpening and masks in a lot of detail. - For those of us brought up on the 'doing' though photo magazines and using the software this is an ideal level of explanation and explains the 'why' of techniques I have been using but not knowing why...
- The book that I bought is the 'New' guide, which follows three previous editions. Therefore it not only includes information that has always been relevant to good prints, but it is also fully up-to-date with DSLR lore and examples for Raw photos and Lightroom 2. This is not the case with several other much-touted photography books.

I disagree with an earlier reviewer that the 'print early, print often' suggestion is controversial. I know my printer well enough already for everyday printing. I don't think I will ever know my monitor and printer well enough not to have to print several proofs for competition entries... If you are at the stage of needing this book, you will know that there is a world of difference between what you see on the screen and what you see with a final print. And that readers, is a photo fact!

Other reviewers have indicated 5* if you have an Epson printer, 4* if you don't. I happen to have an Epson R2400, but most of my learning from this book is independent of the make of my printer. I would still score this book 5* if I owned a different make of printer - although I am even happier having an Epson. You will probably get more from this book if you have at least six cartridges in your printer, and even more if like me, you have eight/nine cartridges and print colour and B+W... This book has improved my understanding a great deal and I now need to invest time and ink to achieve better prints. Incidentally, if you don't already use a bulk ink flow system you really should start looking into it for pigment ink at a sixth of the price...

And finally... p.58 "Let me be straight with you. You get better photographs by taking lots of pictures and better prints by making lots of prints, not by following a workflow. Photography and digital printing are crafts. You can study them and learn about them, but to gain the experience of what works and what does not requires you to 'do them'... to master any craft, you need to work at that craft."

I agree whole heartedly with this view, and I recommend this book to anyone who wants to enjoy their photography more by improving their digital printing - whether or not they own an Epson printer.

Whilst this book is not the best structured, and the initial parts cover much of what you would find in a photography book - it is common sense that you can't make a good quality print out of a poor photograph. However, when you have waded half way through the book you get to the real meat. A work flow of the things to consider in producing a quality print. And then some extrmely useful stuff about how to enhance your photos by darkening/lightening selected areas of the photo using photoshop. The concepts are based on the old dark room techniques, albeit they do not use the dodge and burn tools in photoshop. Using curves/levels/hue and saturation adjustment layer masks, the improvement in my prints has been distintly noticable.

I did have to spend much more time working on one photo, but with time I spend less and less, as now I know what I am doing.