Do you know? since Lightroom first launched, Scott Kelby’s The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers has been the world’s #1 best-selling Lightroom book (it has been translated into a dozen different languages), and in this latest version for Lightroom 4, Scott uses his same award-winning, step-by-step, plain-English style and layout to make learning Lightroom easy and fun.
Review:
Scott Kelby has written a great many books on various flavors of Photoshop and LR. It them he provides explanations of how things work and then gives very clear, extremely detailed examples (recipes) of how *he* uses them. As he is also an accomplished photographer, following his recipes can lead to successful results.
This is great for beginners. Yes, you can take LR and learn it on your own and watch a bunch of videos. But Scott Kelby has a very easy to follow style of writing and there are a lot of tips and tricks that are just easier to remember and visualize while reading.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book for Digital Photographers is a must for those new to Lightroom. If you are familiar with Scott’s video style of relaxed casual conversations you won’t be surprised by the book’s easy to read entertaining conversational writing.
Written by the easy-to-read language, the book goes through all processes in Lightroom from import of the photo, adjustments printing or publishing in Web. Recommended for those, who is very new to Adobe Lightroom and maybe people with a little experience. A lot of step-by-step instructions with illustrations, help to understand the process at once. Style is nice and funny, and the jokes of the author makes the reading a pleasure.
If you’ve never used Lightroom, then you are best off starting with Classroom in a Book, getting the basics and learn the software. Once you have a grasp of Lightroom 4, THEN pick up Kelby’s book.
One thing to remember, that neither book really teaches, is that there are many different ways to build your own personal workflow. You don’t need to follow everything either resource tells you in your personal workflow unless you find it works well for you.
The inclusion of the gray card in the back of the book adds to the value. Sure, it’s a cheap piece of card stock, but if you have to have a perfect white balance and don’t want to invest in a larger, more robust or expensive color kit, this will do 90% of what you are hoping to accomplish with white balance (pros will still want the color kits, of course).
LR is a different organizational concept from Photoshop and other digital editing software. Once you tell the “technical geek” that dwells inside many of us to sit down and be quiet then it is easier to relax and grasp the LR organizational concepts as being OK. Scott’s workflow approach to chapters makes this possible.
Scott Kelby knows what he is talking about. Just listen. Follow his suggestions. Take it a step further. He makes you a much better photographer, and gets you familiar with the software necessary to take you there. The book certainly has benefited from its various iterations. Where tools have been carried over from older versions, everything is crystal clear. For a new module, like the book module, the instructions are still good, but they lack the complete clarity and smoothness of the other lessons.
If you own Lightroom and have questions, the answers will be in this book. If you are contemplating Lightroom and wonder if it is for you, this book will show you the true power of the program. The current version of this book and the software. Lightroom 3 is history and there is no point in investing in an outmoded program, the same goes for this book. Lightroom 4 is substantially different than version 3, and if you are using Lightroom 4 you want the book that matches your program.
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