2007-05-16 Good introduction, couple of issues

I enjoyed this book. It has a couple of 'issues' but it is well structured and clearly written, which made it a satisfying read and provides a number of useful techniques I will be taking into my workflow.

The author sets out to describe a colour correction workflow and touches on all the major steps. Roughly the first third of the book establishes some background, covering Colour Fundamentals, Colour Management and a quick overview of the key Photoshop Tools of relevance to the process. It also warns against those tools which should not be entertained. The remaining part of the book covers the main steps involved in the colour correction process, so setting the Highlights and Shadows, establishing Neutral Tones, enhancing Contrast and then Sharpening tasks. The book finishes with a round up of Advanced Techniques, which touches on the more sophisticated aspects of Channel Blending, corrections in the CIELAB colour space, Synthetic Colour Profiles, and finally, for some reason, a quick nod to using PS in astrophotography. All of the main topics are covered in good detail and the book works well as an introduction to the whole area.

On to the issues. Some of these issues must of necessity be subjective of course. I come to this book as an amateur digital photographer with an interest in getting as much out of my photos as possible, at least the good ones. So the first point to be noted is that I work entirely within an RGB workflow and I am unlikely to be asked to prepare photos for a book, at least in the world outside my dreams :-). One of the stated aims of the book is to recognise that a key part of the colour correction process is to support successful colour separation, in other words converting RGB to CMYK, which naturally puts a limit on full relevance of the book to my workflow. That being said however, there were a couple of very useful looking techniques which involved going into the CMYK colour space to get hold of particular channels and then blending them back into the RGB photo to enhance the overall image. Very nice I thought, though still recognising that a number of other CMYK techniques discussed were of less relevance.

A further aspect of my workflow is that the vast majority of my 'published' images end up on the web, for consumption by friends and family. Here the book is a bit disappointing. Two pages in one of the appendices covers colour on the web, and it basically says "Web not colour managed hence can't do much about it". This may be true of course, but one would still like a strategy for handling this aspect of the real world.

One mistake I thought I noticed came up in the section on L*A*B*. There seems to be a disconnect between the text covering the use of curves in the L*A*B* space and the diagram of the same. Basically, it involves which corner of the curves tool contains the highlight and which the shadows, top right or bottom left? It seems the main text and the text supporting the diagram say opposite things. I am also not convinced that the curves diagrams for the a* and b* channels are the right way round. See Figure 8-19 on page 306 if you are interested.

Another disconcerting example concerns the use of the Hue/Saturation tool. In one case the author talks about reducing the saturation of Cyan in a particular image and then moves the Sat slider to the right, ending up with a +25% result. This would be regarded as such a basic 'error' that I cannot help but think that PS has changed the way it handles the tool over time.

This brings us to the last issue, in that time has not been too kind to the book. The edition I read was copyright 2003 when PS7 ruled the roost. Of course, we are now three editions on from there, so there is no discussion of the Shadow/Highlight command, which might be used in preference over some of the curves moves in the book, nor the capabilities of the various sliders in Lightroom, nor the new Vibrance command, of course, which seems to be a preferable choice over the Saturation tool because it provides a non-linear effect, as I understand it. A bit unfair to raise these items as an issue maybe but it does mean that you need a little thought about how the techniques described in this book will be used today.

The above issues pull the rating back from 5 stars to something like a 4 minus, but I reiterate my opening comments; a good introduction to the whole area. I feel that it will be of of particular use for intermediate users of PS but perhaps a little bit of a stretch for beginners. I also recommend that you read this book, bring the techniques into your workflow and then go on to read the Margulis books on the same area, in which case you will get much more out of them. That is what I will be doing.