Photoshop Color Correction [Illustrated] (Paperback)

Want to know WHY tools like brightness/contrast aren't so good and what to do instead ? Want to know how to REALLY do curves ? Without a PhD ? Follow the book and try it on your pictures and all is revealed. And no other book I'd tried had tackled fixing contrast in as much depth with full explanations of what is really happening. To get this much information and this number of techniques together would have taken about 3 books before and even then I hadn't seen simple tricks such as using synthetic profiles rather than using levels and it took just 10 minutes to set up the profiles by just following the book.

Doesn't matter whether you prefer RGB or CMYK - this covers both. The only thing really missing is how to get rid of noise from pictures - guess I need to keep on looking for a book on that one.

The book introduces the fundamentals and management of colour and applies this to Photoshop 6 & 7.

A good book for those finding themselves with digital photographs or image scans that appear rather 'flat' and would like to understand why and how to correct them, without a trial and error process.

Presentation is excellent and text is clear and easy to read.

If you are seriously interested in color correction there are actually only two serious books which qualify at this time:

- Dan Margulis The Professional Guide To Color Correction
- Michael Kieran Photoshop Color Correction

I've chosen the latter after comparing both and these are my personal reasons:

- Although Dan Margulis guide is certainly de facto the professional standard, it focusses almost entirely on CMYK color corrections. This is recommendable when you work in a professional pre-press environment, but not interesting when most of your work is screen or web oriented, or when most of your prints not go further than your own desktop printer (in the last case, is even better to stay in the RGB environment for your prints).

- Michael Kieran's approach is far broader than the road Dan Margulis follows: his guide will learn you RGB, CMYK and even Lab corrections, so the choice is yours depending on the picture and destination at hand.

Now for the books specific plusses and minusses:

- The book is full color thru out, with clear explications of each pic and the procedure to follow to optimise the pic. As a plus most pics come on the CD-Rom, so you can see the result for your self. On the minus, the pics on the CD-Rom are low resolution, which is kind of cheap.

- As said before it covers RGB, CMYK AND Lab corrections, and motivates why different colorspaces are better for corrections than others.

- And most recommendable: there is a decent 83 pages on general information regarding colorspaces and colormanagement, which is essential when you want to indulge in color correction. There is not point in color correcting images when your monitor is not calibrated, because in that case you start out with the wrong point of reference.

So for people who's work is mainly screen, web or desktop print oriented, I recommend this guide in stead of Dan Margulis Professional Photoshop Color Correction guide. The only reason I did not give it five stars, is because it's kind of cheap to include low res pictures on the CD Rom.