Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Real World)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Peachpit Press
• Edition: 1st Edition November 17, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0321518675
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0321518675
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Weighs: 7.2 ounces

Book Description
The raw revolution that began in 2003 with the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in for Adobe Photoshop has changed the way photographers work with images. Shooting in the raw format gives digital photographers complete control over every aspect of image quality. Adobe Camera Raw makes the process of using raw files easier by providing a standardized way of accessing and working with these uncompressed digital negatives. Today serious photographers shoot raw images only. Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop was the first book devoted exclusively to the topic, explaining the advantages and challenges of using Adobe Camera Raw to produce awesome images.

Real World Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3 keeps pace with new directions in digital photography and raw image processing. Jeff Schewe, a contributor to the development of Adobe Camera Raw from its beginnings, updates Bruce Fraser’s best-selling book with inside knowledge of how new features let photographers optimize and convert images for the best results in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Hands-on techniques show readers how to expose and shoot for raw image capture as well as use new features such as Spot Healing. Readers will also learn how to use the latest version of Adobe Bridge to manage the thousands of images—and gigabytes of data—that result from raw shooting. Finally, Schewe discusses how Adobe’s latest revolutionary imaging software Photoshop Lightroom adds to the raw equation.



About The Author
Jeff Schewe is a professional advertising photographer and digital imaging consultant who has advised on and contributed to the development of Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop to the extent that his name appears in the software’s acknowledgements. A summa cum laude graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, Jeff is a past President of the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) and is one of 65 photographers worldwide recognized as a Canon Explorer of Light.

Until his death in 2006, Bruce Fraser had been an internationally known author, consultant, and speaker on the topics of digital imaging and color reproduction. His many best-selling books included Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop, Real World Adobe Photoshop, Real World Image Sharpening and Real World Color Management.



Reader Reviews
This book should be reviewed in the context of three key directions in which the Creative Suite developers have been moving digital imaging over the past few years: workflow and process integration, major development of the raw processing pipeline and the creation of many more user-friendly and powerful tools which directly respond to the needs of photographers. To date, the culmination of these related initiatives is the production of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw 4.x and Adobe Bridge 2.x. The important new features of these applications are so extensive that no book dealing with previous versions of Camera Raw and Bridge will give users adequate instruction and advice about how best to use them. This leads to the question of who should be using these programs, and therefore who should be reading this book. Anyone who wishes to maximize the quality of their photographs and have the fullest possible control over doing so should use a camera giving them "raw" files, Adobe Photoshop and Camera Raw for converting those raw files into high quality photographs, and this book to learn how to master and manage Camera Raw, Bridge and the DNG open-source raw file format. There is, however, much more to this book than editing the appearance of photographs, as fundamentally important as that is. Reflecting the contemporary evolution of these programs, the book has three major areas of emphasis, these being a primer on the nature of a digital image and a raw file (very useful for understanding what one is working with and why some kinds of editing operations are preferable to others), instruction on how best to use Camera Raw for getting the most out of the images one has captured, and workflow (i.e. "what to do when") - emphasizing and explaining not only an orderly way of working within the Camera Raw module itself, but also how to get optimal efficiency in organizing, identifying and processing ones' images using the integrative features of Bridge, Camera Raw, and Photoshop. This structure of the book makes perfect sense given the intended integration of these applications to facilitate efficient and effective workflow. Hence Chapters 1 and 2 provide a compact and highly readable primer on the anatomy of a digital image and a raw file and basically how Camera Raw works. If you weren't totally convinced before you bought the book why you should be working as much as possible with raw files rather than JPEGs, these two chapters will make that issue will go away. Chapter 3 provides a handy integrative overview of how Camera Raw, Bridge, Photoshop and DNG all hang together as a system. The remainder of the book is devoted to a very detailed and comprehensive explanation of when and how to use these tools. Chapters 4 and 5 explain the Camera Raw controls in depth - which is really important, because the last I counted there are at least 84 of them that could be independently combined in infinite ways to produce the image in the eye of the user's mind (and this excludes DNG creation and camera calibration also explained here in depth). The book explains what each of these tools do, how to use them, and most instructively, in Chapter 5, the authors present a very well selected variety of imaging situations we would all encounter, showing firstly how to evaluate what the images need done to them. Then they demonstrate in detail the individual edits performed to improve sharpness, contrast and color as appropriate to the objectives of the edits. Once you've completed reading this chapter you will have a very solid knowledge base from which to gain experience using this program to greatest advantage on your own images. I've processed about 1600 images in Camera Raw and I've run across every situation the authors cover here. I think they've done an excellent job in terms of both correct treatment of their sample images and the exposition of how to do it. It's clear, well illustrated, detailed and accurate. That takes us to page 201, and Chapters 6 to 9 inclusive. As far as I know, you won't find a more convenient, comprehensive and detailed treatment of how to work with Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw, developing efficient workflows for handling files, folders, collections, metadata and process automation. For busy people needing to organize, recall and process large numbers of images quickly and efficiently, there is a wealth of indispensable instruction here covering the many features in these programs which make this possible. Having read the book, I'm now keeping it beside my keyboard. It will serve as the most useful hands-on reference work that I own on Camera Raw, Bridge and DNG. It is with deep regret that Bruce Fraser is no longer with us to celebrate the accomplishment of this book, but we can take comfort in the fact that Jeff Schewe has picked up the torch, run with it and brought to fruition a remarkable piece of work which makes a really important contribution to our knowledge of digital imaging. Comment | | (Report this)