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For the few unfamiliar with him, Tim has authored or co-authored
several books of Photoshop and digital photography and currently
works as sort of Microsoft’s liaison to digital photographers. He is
a former editor of George Lepp’s newsletter, Digital Imaging, where
he built a reputation for making Photoshop® accessible to mere
mortals with straightforward explanations. In this latest edition to
his suite of Tim Grey Guides, he brings these skills to Lightroom.
One of the strengths of Lightroom (the software) is its logical
organization, and Lightroom Workflow (the book) follows this model.
After providing an overview of each module, Tim takes you through
the options in the order in which you might expect to encounter them
in your actual workflow.
He doesn’t merely present and explain the options, but explains
their interaction on each other, which is particularly important in
the DEVELOP module. Further, he recommends which of the available
options he selects, explains why, states the order in which to use
them, and names some he wouldn’t use at all. Example: “I recommend
against the use of this [Contrast] control.”
His explanation of the Tone Curve and three different ways to
approach it are so straightforward that anyone should be able to
tackle it, and I suspect more than a few who “get” curves through
this book will tackle the more complex and more flexible tool in
Adobe Photoshop.
He concludes with a recommended workflow, which may seem
superfluous given Lightroom’s workflow-oriented layout, but which in
less than a page outlines not just the order of the modules, but the
recommend sequence of steps within them.
My one criticism is that some illustrations of Lightroom
dialogues are so small and have such low contrast that they are
unreadable. But then, so are the actual dialogues.
This is an excellent exposition of the complexity behind the
deceptively simple Lightroom interface. I highly recommend it.
—Jim Lewis, Action Central |