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The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby: ReviewThere are dozens of Lightroom books on the market. Over time, this website will offer reviews of many of these books. This book by Scott Kelby is one of the most popular Lightroom books available. The Bottom LineLightroom is a complex program with many uses and many tools. Kelby's book covers all the important stuff for a person who is new to the program in a easy to understand manner.
Detailed ReviewScott Kelby has has authored a number of computer technology books, mostly relating to Photoshop and digital imaging. He currently is president of the trade organization for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and is the editor-in-chief of Layers Magazine and Photoshop User. In short, this guy knows his stuff. He could write very intimidating books with all this knowledge and experience, but he doesn't. What he does write is easy to understand, entertaining, and informative for both "experts" and new users. This book continues Kelby's excellent work in educating the world about various digital imaging software products. It is presented in his standard, conversational style in his standard step-by-step organizational style. This is the second edition of the book - the first covered the 1.x versions of Lightroom; this book covers the changes made moving from Lightroom 1.x to Lightroom 2.0 (e.g., localized correction tools) and adds new workflow related material. "Workflow" is a much overused term in digital media today. Generally speaking, it referees to the steps taken to move from capturing an image (or video), storing it (safely and securely), and using it (printing, distributing, etc). Every person shooting photos has a workflow - this is not just for professionals. Even if you are "simply" shooting a few photos on your point-and-shoot digital camera, pulling them into the computer, and emailing them to your friends, you are following a "workflow" that uses a number of tools and techniques. You may not have formalized these procedures but they are there. Since most of us now shoot digitally, we are producing images in ever greater quantities. This growth makes having a defined and solid workflow ever more important. Kelby's book describes the use of Lightroom to realize a reasonable workflow. If you are new to digital imaging, the cost of Lightroom (about $200) may seem high. A program like this, however, is very worthwhile and will pay for itself many times over in the time and effort you will save over the years. In the first six chapters the book illustrates step-by-step the techniques employed by digital photographers after images are captured by the camera. These chapters cover importing, organizing and editing photos. Most people using Lightroom are likely to use most of the techniques described in these chapters. Kelby addresses such topics as using Quick Develop and the full Develop module (almost every tool), external editing using Photoshop, Photoshop automation, key wording, embedded / embedding meta data, sorting, renaming, white balance settings, editing presets, cropping and rotating. In short, this is a quick course in the most important features that Adobe Lightroom offers. In each chapter, Kelby offers his sensibilities and starting points for readers. He shares his thoughts and approaches as well as actual settings and techniques that he uses. Kelby has organized the book in an order that engages the reader with a series of steps that resemble an actual production workflow. This streamlines the learning process so the reader can begin almost immediately. He suggests the order in which users should use this very powerful editing and organization tool. For new users of this complicated software, this book is an important learning tool that will make the program manageable and useful immediately. I have yet to find a publication that describes what many of the adjustments in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom do to the images on a technical level. Kelby’s book does this. For example, he provides great explanations of how to use the various controls for tonality (exposure, blacks, recovery) with vivid examples that make his points obvious. He describes the “less intuitive” controls in an easy to understand manner. For example, he describes the Vibrance slide and contrasts it with the Saturation control in an easy to see and understand manner. The Lightroom help files are of almost no use in this regard; they are without any examples and very minimal text to describe the controls. Kelby uses concrete examples and simple language to describe complex topics making this book a great companion to Lightroom. In chapters 9 - 12, Kelby describes the use of the "output" parts of Lightroom. This includes techniques for converting images to black and white, printing, creating web ready galleries, and slide show creation. Since not everyone uses each of the capabilities, I would expect some or all of these chapters to go unused. However, a quick read of these chapters will give you many new ways to use Lightroom and your images. The final two chapters of the book are devoted to describing sample workflows for two specific kinds of Lightroom users: wedding/portrait photographers and outdoor/landscape/travel shooters. Again, this material is not for everyone but the writing is crisp and informative and is well worth reading for tips and techniques that you may want to use in your workflow. From a workflow development point of view, Kelby covers most of the critical issues. One area that needs more attention with any workflow is the appropriate backup procedures. Kelby covers this aspect as it relates to backing up the Lightroom database. He does not cover (nor would we expect him to cover) all of the issues related to securely backing up digital images. From a full workflow development point of view, this is the biggest hole in Kelby's book that will require some other resource to understand. Again, we wouldn't expect Kelby to cover this in a Lightroom book. This book has been well-reviewed in many places. We are pleased to add our voice of support for this book! Book OrganizationThe fourteen chapters are organized in the following manner:
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