Craft Books

[Bill Pierce]

I must be getting old and grumpy because I find most of the books on digital photography, both the taking and the printing, disappointing and shallow. That’s OK, but they are also expensive; so it’s a little disappointing when they get immediately assigned to the stack that is reserved for flattening prints and holding open doors.

I thought it might narrow down our purchases and make them more successful if we listed those technical books that we have learned from. My first nominee would be Real World Photoshop CS4 for Photographers by Conrad Chavez and David Blatner. There have been seven prior editions of this book series. In those, Bruce Fraser was the cowriter with David Blatner. What he contributed to digital photography as a writer and a creator of computer programs was immense. And a great deal of that is still contained in the eighth book.

A wonderful compliment to this book (and totally different in style) is Scott Kelby’s Photoshop CS4 Book for Digital Photographers.

Equally helpful is his book, The Adobe Photshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers

OK, what do you recommend as craft books for the digital photographer? Once we set the world straight on this issue, maybe we can tackle the impossible, recommending books of images.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Photoshop for Photographers by Martin Evening is very good. Its been published in several editions, buy the one for the version of Photoshop you use. I second all of Bill's recommendations too. Real World Photoshop was my teacher when I first began using the software 9 years ago and I still think its the best book on the subject.

 

[Ranchu]

Adobe Photoshop Restoration and Retouching by Katrin Eismann is good.

 

[Bob Rogers]

I read "Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography" last summer. As I said on my book review blog:

It’s a sharp contrast to the seemingly endless numbers of superficial “tips and tricks” books on the subject and is the digital equivalent Ansel Adams’ “Basic Photo Series”

 

[Jim-st]

An earlier RW work got me started and taught me much of the basics about working with photos on a computer back in the early 2000's: Real World Scanning & Halftones (2nd edn) by Blatner, Fleishmann & Roth. Not just a scanner's manual, a primer in digital imaging that taught me about bit-depth, ppi/dpi/lpi, and a whole lot more before I got my first DSLR

Also transformational I think was Bruce Fraser's Real World Camera Raw in Photoshop CSx (later versions by Jeff Schewe), which is where I learnt to make the most of digital camera output, as well as why to expose to the right!

 

[Graham Line]

Phiip Andrews' series on Elements, from Focal Press, has been very easy to use.

 

[Chuck Albertson]

Put another way, what's the digital equivalent of David Vestal's "Craft of Photography" (which I still pull off the shelf from time to time)?