Digital Photography: Expert Techniques: Professional Tips for Using Photoshop & Related Tools to Enhance Your Digital Photographs (O'Reilly Digital Studio)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Ken Milburn Our price £31.95 New from £17.33 Used from £12.00 Pages: 484 (Paperback) ISBN: 0596005474 Pub: O'Reilly Media, Inc. Pub date: 2004-03-19 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 577291

Reader Reviews:

A mixed bag (0/0 people found this helpful)

Milburn's goes into some depth, which is what you want at this "expert" level, however he is often wordy where a screenshot would explain better, and the quality of his photographic examples is very poor. A lot of time will be spent trying to figure out the difference between before and after, only to conclude "before " looks better.

Some of his Photoshop examples are as inane as turning up the yellow clour balance, and guess what, showing you a case of a girl looking like she has jaundice. This is not what you want, which is how to use the tool to solve real problems, not showing how increasing the yellow makes the picture more yellow.Duh!

A Chapter is wasted in pseudo-psychedelic filters no pro would go near. This man has spent too long in California and needs to get out more.At one point he comments you wont detect any difference in the sharpness of the illustration before and after, " but you would if it was at full page size" Eh? Its simple. Show us an enlarged section before and after, not an excuse.

He tips his hat to the magnificent Peter Krogh DAM methodology, then proceeds to ignore it totally. The screenshots often show dialogue boxes incorrectly checked for the steps he describes. And overlooks to mention what three quarters of the options do or why you would choose or not choose them.

There is some good advice gleaned from years of working as a professional, and I thank him for that, but compared to the wonderful O'Reilly stablemate, Katrin Eismann , Ken Milburn is I am afraid largely past his sell by date.

comprehensive workflow (1/1 people found this helpful)

As a photoshop novice, I was interested to see what I could get out of the software. Ken Milburn's book is a fantastic starting point - it covers, in generous detail, every aspect of the photographic workflow, from setting up your camera through to setting up and using Adobe Photoshop to process your images.

The writing is clear and concise, as you'd expect from an O'Reilly book. Ken clearly knows a lot about his subject and litters his pages with tons of useful advice and practical examples not only of what to do, but also *why* you should be doing it this way.

Several co-workers have pestered for a look at the book, at which point they promptly went off and bought their own copies!

I'd say that you need to know a little about your digital camera, and have a passing knowledge of Photoshop in order to get the best out of this book, but I'd certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to get more from their photography.

Expert Techniques dissapointing (1/1 people found this helpful)

I am an intermediate user of Photoshop and have used Paintshop Pro in the past. I purchased this book because a thumb-through led me to believe that it would help hone my Photoshop skills. I found that, for several jobs which I knew how to do well, the recommendations in this book were not the best way to do things (in my opinion). Several times the reader was referred to third party software (which need to be purchased) to do a task which is easily doable in Photoshop. I simply found that tips which were useful to me were very few and far between. This is not a book I would recommend to others; there are better out there.

Lots of good advice (3/3 people found this helpful)

I'm an amateur photographer and long-time Photoshop user who just picked up my first digital SLR and I found Milburn’s book very useful. The author assumes familiarity with photography in general and dives right into what makes digital photography special. Milburn goes to great length to offer advice on practical issues regarding preparation, shooting, manipulating, and storing digital shots. It is evident that the advice comes from Milburn’s own experience as a photographer and I found myself going “aha!” on several occasions.

I have other books on photo editing, but most of them offers more insight on Photoshop and less advice on how to get the shots right in the first place. Milburn is primarily a photographer and secondly a Photoshop user and that shines through his examples. This is a book for people who like to work with their own pictures. Milburn does a good job at getting someone with my background on the right track for producing good pictures. Getting the shot right or close to perfect will significantly reduce the post production effort in Photoshop and offer a much better chance of success.

The book also offers lots of advice for programs beyond Photoshop CS. While I appreciate the additional insight it's of limited use since only the most dedicated photographers will have access to that kind of tools. I would have preferred more advice on working with different output devices.

The book is nicely illustrated with many colour photos to support the discussion of the various techniques.

All in all I recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve their skills as a photographer and Photoshop user.

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