| This is an important addition to the
bookshelf of any photographer who uses digital imaging in nature and
landscape work.
Rob Sheppard is editor of Outdoor Photographer. Through
his regular columns in Digital PhotoPro, he regularly debunks
Photoshop myths—such as that final output image resolution must be a
multiple of printer resolution or that you cannot get quality prints
from jpeg images—and of truths that do not matter—printer resolution
of 300 ppi is technically superior to resolution of 200 or 240 ppi.
He takes the same iconoclastic approach in this book, which is
aimed squarely at the nature or landscape photographer. Have you
been taught that brightness/contrast is a tool to be avoided?
Sheppard shows you why and how to use it. Think that curves is
preferable to levels? Sheppard uses both in the same image, and will
soon have you doing it, too. Think every image needs 16-bit
treatment? Sheppard doesn't, particularly if it creates overhead
that interferes with his step-by-step approach to image development
in Photoshop CS2.
That approach is based on the traditional darkroom
techniques of pre-digital masters, particularly Ansel Adams who,
Sheppard argues convincingly, would have been right at home with
Photoshop. Adams used a step-by-step approach to image enhancement
in his darkroom. Sheppard analyses it using Adams' notes from some
of his best-loved images, then adapts the technique to the digital
darkroom.
The technique can be simply described: Fix one problem at a time,
rather than trying to force several changes at once. That requires
multiple layers, often using the same tool, such as curves or
levels, 2-3 times in succession on limited areas of the image. (The
wonder of layers, which Sheppard does not explicitly state, is that
the stretching of pixels is non-cumulative, as are multiple
alterations of a single layer. You can usually build layers to your
hearts content without risking posterization, and that's the
approach employed here.)
The magic of the book is that it shows you where and when to do
this through a series of tutorials that should cover most of the
challenges with which you'll be confronted on a well-exposed,
properly focused image.
The book has its faults. If you faithfully following Sheppard's
steps for creating an HDR image, you will have difficulty making the
exposures match perfectly, for he seems to suggest varying f-stops
rather than exposure time. But more users stepping seriously into
HDR know that, and it's a minor glitch in what is otherwise a fine
book.
The volume's strength is that it focuses on what is important to
the nature photographer and ignores or rejects tools that you do not
need. Thus, type layers are never mentioned, and the patch tool is
mentioned only dismissively.
There is, as one reader, complained, "nothing hew here." But that
misses the point. Sheppard puts what is tried and true in Photoshop
CS2 together in new and useful ways. Outdoor Photographer Landscape
and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2 has joined my short list
of essential Photoshop books.
—Jim Lewis, Action Central |