Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure
January 14th, 2009 by Gordon Cook
The Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe’s Next-generation Tool for Digital Photographers is my absolute favorite of all the O’Reilly photo guides - although the Rocky Nook Press books are themselves outstanding. Probably a year and a half ago I requested a copy of the first Lightroom Adventure book. It was so extraordinarily well done and such a visual treat that I shelved my Aperture software and bought a copy of light room. I love it and find it utterly indispensable. However, without a manual, it is pretty much unusable. The O’Reilly book folk sent the Adobe photographers to Iceland and produced a volume of both great beauty and utilitarian value.
Last summer I paid for Lightroom upgrade and as soon as I saw Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure, I pleaded for my review copy.
It is a gorgeous and absolutely indispensable book for all Lightroom users. This time the Adobe crew was sent to Tasmania. It is a source of pleasurable frustration as I am trying to do my newsletter work and digitize some 15,000 color negatives from Russia and the Himalaya, that the time spent inside the book has not been nearly as long as I would like.
I have used it to decipher some of the post-processing tools – and there are more of them in this version. One of the ones that I look forward to is the graduated filter described on page 110. I remember this from the 1990s when the physical filter was called a graduated neutral density. I bought one for my old film camera and tried to use it but with uncertain results. The example in the Lightroom text is one of a Tasmanian beach and sky where the contrast of light in the sky and shade on the beach yields a situation where either the sky is washed out or the beach too dark. The filter however produced such stunning results that the photograph is used on the cover of the book,
A few two-page spreads are used to advantage to show what filters can do. The left-hand page without the filter – the right hand with. Negative clarity on page 220 and 221 and the very subtle Tone Curve Adjustment on 228 and 229.
The book is a visual and artistic delight from cover to cover. Mandatory for the Lightroom user and so well done as to make anyone who thumbs through it want to have and use the software.