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The Michael Corsentino Style Book is a book of photographic formulas containing 25 separate recipes to get just the look you want from your photographs. The style book is part of the Kubota Artist Series of style books featuring various photographers providing examples of how they use Kubota actions to produce images.
Michael Corsentino is an award-winning destination, wedding, and portrait photographer; he’s also an Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom expert, national speaker, and workshop leader. Shooting digitally since 1999, he made his first exposure at the age of 12 and hasn’t put his camera down since.
To use this book you will need several of the Kubota Imaging tools including Kubota Artistic Tools Volumes 1-4, Production Tools Volume 2, Sloppy Borders, Texture Tools Industrial, and Texture Tools Earth. Now if you have most, but not all, the book will still serve you well to experiment and work with what you do have.
Michael Corsentino Style Book
Kubota Formula Book is a spiral-bound book of 25 recipes from Michael Corsentino. Included with it is a companion DVD containing a video tutorial for each formula that walks you through the creation of a final image in Photoshop. This is very handy allowing you to see every change as he makes them.
Each page presents a “before” and “after” image so you can see the results. There is a story behind each image. Many of these are interesting, describing how the shot was captured created.
All the metadata on the exposure, ISO, lens type, etc. is provided along with the steps and actions needed to create the image. The types of formulas range from ones that are edgy to others that are more subdued, from colorful to black and white and many points in between.
The first image I did, I followed the recipe called “Bricks and Mortar.” You can see most of the artist’s final image above. Of course, using a different picture and taking some liberties of my own as I wanted a cooler feel and darker, more ethereal effect, this is the before and after of my rendition.
At the end of this review is my rendition of the recipe called “Gritty City.” Here, too, I made my own changes based on the image I was using. To me, this is the real strength of the Kubota Artist Series Style Books; they give you a frame of look that you can aim for, and then go off with your own changes to the recipe based on your own taste.
While the biggest problem with having all of these actions is learning when to use what combination of actions and tools, the Formula book is an enormous help. I like the way it is laid out and professionally done. With the DVD tutorials it makes learning these tools very easy. There is a lot of power in these actions and once you get a hang for what they do, are very easy to use and make a lot of mundane chores automatic.
If you are a professional photographer, especially one who does weddings, portraits, or graduations, you really owe it to yourself to check into the Michael Corsentino Style Book, the other Kubota Artist Series Style Books, or any of the Kubota products for the photographer. They will allow you to get the maximum productivity with the least amount of effort. Even if you only use a small portion of the effects, they will pay for themselves in time savings and customer satisfaction over and over again. I highly recommend this product.
