Professional Photoshop 6: The Classic Guide to Color Correction [Paperback]

This is not for the beginner learning PS -- Adobe's PS Classroom in a Book is good for that. Likewise, it is not for a person using PS LE or Photo Deluxe, which do not support all of the pre-press features of the full version. Instead, like Bert Monroy's "Photorealistic Techniques with PS & Illustrator," and Biedny, Moody, and Monroy's "PS Channel Chops," this is a book for someone who knows his way around PS, but realizes there is still lots to learn. This is a book that will put hair on your chest.

Margulis essentially shows how to get the best possible corrected color and contrast for a published image. The first two or three chapters of the book are about tweaking the CMYK curves, reading the numbers from PS's info palette. This is the part he calls "monkey work," the correction by the numbers. Of course, it is the basis for all color correction and image improvement. Margulis then goes further, including an entire chapter on the subject of how dot gain settings affect output, for example. His explanation of sharpening -- also an entire chapter -- is excellent. He has a chapter devoted to RGB versus CMY curves, a whole chapter about the importance of the black channel, a chapter about Lab mode corrections, and a chapter or two about adding depth and detail to images by adding contrast to the "unwanted color" (i.e., the cyan plate for a red object). He explains how and when to use channel operations to give images more snap, depth, and detail. And he ties everything together as the book goes along, explaining how to correct specific problems, with before and after illustrations. The differences can be quite subtle -- but it is those subtleties that give the final image a more professional, polished look. And, as often as not, the differences can be quite dramatic.

Margulis is clearly a little full of himself -- see Stephen Gracey's note about his "caustic criticism of others in his field." But he's convinced that sometimes the "flavor of the day" is wrong, mostly about ICC tagging of documents and the problems with color calibration hardware and software. He's probably right. This doesn't get in the way of the numerous useful techniques detailed in this book, and you can skip some of his tirade sections if you want.

One note -- this is not a book just for pre-press professionals or people who use a CMYK workflow. But it will clearly help them most. Even so, anyone who wants to get the best quality printed or on-screen image can benefit from the techniques in this book. It will help photographers printing high-quality digital images on RGB desktop inkjet printers, or advertisers or internet professionals who must prepare images to be posted to the web. Yes, Margulis can occasionally gloss over a point he assumes "anyone" would understand, but if you stick with it the book, you'll see how everything fits together. Margulis *realizes* that good color correction is more art than science. He aims to give the reader the tools and some inspiration to tackle the art and science of color correction, and he succeeds. On several occasions, I found myself thinking, "Hey, I never thought about doing that!"

Highly recommended; not necessarily for the beginner, though.

Dan Margulis describes how to effectively color balance and adjust contrast without loss of detail. Chapter 4 is probably worth the price of the book alone. In it, Margulis describes a very effective sharpening technique which does not produce the usual "halo" effect if you try to oversharpen.

Margulis accomplishes all sorts of wonderful image enhancements without the use of tricky selections or masking. He also covers a radically different method of moving between RGB, CMYK, and/or LAB modes to get the best possible image quality.

If you already feel somewhat comfortable with some of Photoshop's capabilities, but you just aren't getting the printout "punch" you'd otherwise expect, this book is highly recommended.