Mac Osx

Photoshop CS2 Raw : Using Adobe Camera Raw, Bridge, and Photoshop to Get the Most Out of Your Digital Camera

Format: Paperback
Author: Mikkel Aaland
ReleaseDate: 15 March, 2006
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Rating:

A nice introduction to RAW
The book gives a well-written and useful explanation of what RAW is all about, and also shows some good examples of what you can do with RAW. I bought this book after reading the other 5-star reviews, so I thought Wow! This must be it! Well, it's almost 'it'. It also helps you to decide when to shoot in RAW or when you'd better just switch to JPG.

Unfortunately, the images used in the book are of poor quality, both in terms of press and art. Actually they are just ordinary snapshots, for which JPG would be enough. The photos don't contribute so much to the text, because they are quit messy. Often it was not very clear what a certain change in Photoshop really does with the picture. The images are quit dull and smudgy.

Text however is clearly written, and after reading this book you have a very good impression about the power of RAW and how you can greatly enhance your photos by using Camera Raw and PhotoShop CS2. It gives you enough starting material to go on. Too bad the author didn't use more appealing pictures to show what awesome things you can do with RAW. From a award-winning professional, I expected high quality images and print.

Nevertheless I can recommend this book to anyone who wants to use RAW and who can work with Photoshop. You are able to master several important techniques with this book by your side. Then proceed to the next step: enhancing your finest pictures to exceptional pieces of art.

Good for Starters
These are the books that tell you how to use ACR, which is the front end of Adobe Photoshop, and which is used to process digital photographs taken utilizing the RAW format. This is another entry in the Adobe Camera Raw ("ACR") sweepstakes. This is the format that provides more information and opportunities to control the image than the JPEG format, but also requires more manipulation to get the photograph from camera to final output. There is other software that can be used to process RAW images but Photoshop, with good reason, dominates the market.

Aaland's book is clear and understandable and provides the information that people need to use ACR, particularly if they can't get a handle on Adobe's rather bare-boned and non-linear instructions contained with Photoshop. After a brief discussion of RAW as a format, Aaland starts with a discussion of Adobe Bridge, which is a picture management program provided with Photoshop, the knowledgeable use of which will contribute to effective processing in ACR. He then discusses each of the tools available in ACR and tells you how they work. Where there are similar tools available in both ACR and the main Photoshop program, such as sharpening and noise correction, the author compares them and presents arguments as to when each of the similar tools is best used. He discusses using RAW for generating black and white pictures (although he did not convince me that this was a better approach then creating them in the channel mixer facility of the main Photoshop program) and using the Adobe DNG file format. He finishes up with a brief tour of multiple picture processing and automated functions like actions, contact sheets and web gallery creation.

Other than as mentioned above, there is no discussion of processing in the main Photoshop program.

There are other books that deal with the ACR function. Like Aaland's book, John Canfield's "Raw 101" is aimed at the beginning ACR user. It seemed a little skimpier, and didn't cover all of the non-ACR functions that Aaland covered, but it also addressed Photoshop Elements, although not in
elements' latest iteration. Rob Sheppard's "Adobe Camera Raw for Digital Photographers Only" is limited to ACR in Photoshop only, is much more detailed then either Canfield or Aaland, emphasizes the artistic use of ACR, and might prove just a little daunting for newcomers to Photoshop.

My own feeling is that no one who realizes the capability of Photoshop and wants to employ that capability will feel content reading just one Photoshop book. Each additional book will show how to get more out of the software. Aaland's book will be a good start, but it shouldn't be the end of the educational process. .

RAW and Beyond
I in particular liked the chapter on B&W photography which challenged my entrenched ways on doing things (channel mixer, two hue/sat layers with one set on luminance. I believe that the title of this book should be "Photoshop CS2 RAW and Much More" because the author not only explains the usage of Photoshop RAW in detail, but he also shows many new creative ways how to integrate it with your work in Photoshop.. . ) . Everything is tested, well documented with screenshots, and easy to follow, yet the author doesn't pontify and doesn't insist that his is the only way, but he encourages the reader to try for him/herself and see. A great book and much more than just "how to" in Camera Raw.