As many of you know from my review of Adobe Lightroom that Lightroom is a new workflow management program from Adobe that will seriously help your management of photographic assets from day one. Well, you knew it had to happen, but one of the masters of all things Photoshop, Scott Kelby, would be coming out with a book on Lightroom. Along with being the President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), he is the editor-in-chief of both Photoshop User magazine as well as Darkroom, a companion publication devoted to Lightroom that is available free to NAPP members.
Being a member of NAPP, I have known of Scott Kelby for years and am familiar with his teaching style and the entertaining way he presents information. When I found out that he was coming out with a book on Lightroom, I knew I had to get a copy. Needless to say, I was not disappointed.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book breaks out into eleven chapters but before you get to chapter one you must first pass through the "An unexpected Q & A Session." Again, here is the Kelby wit performing to get you to read an introduction to the book. Here he explains what the book is and how you should read it, kind like if Abbot and Costello wrote the intro!
Chapter one is on importing your photos. Each of these sections are built into steps to achieve the goal. They are detailed steps on how to accomplish the task at hand with interjections of how the author performs the task and little bits of wisdom sprinkled throughout. As simple as importing may be, the twenty-five pages will expose many time saving tips.
Chapter two, "Library" begins the meat of the book. He explores the best ways to view your photos. Shows how to organize, label and sort out the keepers from the trash. He talks about Metadata, grouping, finding as well as the hidden power of the filmstrip. You will learn to work with file, folders, multiple libraries as well as backing up your database.
Chapter three, "Quick Develop", shows you how to do minor corrections from within the library module and how to apply that same fix to a bunch of other photos. Although this is a short chapter, the depth in which Kelby goes into within this book is evident here as it is throughout this book. For example, step eight in "Doing Quick Fixes" the author shows a histogram of a photo and explains "See that gap on the right, where the graph just stops before it reaches the right side? This gap tells me that I can increase the highlights in the photo (which I control by increasing my Exposure setting) a little bit more with out loosing detail in the highlights of my photo." It is this kind of insight that I look for in a book, that makes it a must read; especially for a new product.
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