Review of “Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering Adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers”

Digital Asset Management is no longer just a buzzword among top tier photographers, it is a necessity for even the neophyte digital photographer.

While there are many options for Digital Asset Management (DAM) – Adobe’s Lightroom is quickly becoming a favorite among photographers. There is a lot going on within any DAM program, especially one as feature rich as Lightroom, and to truly get the most out of such a program you’ll need a guide.

“Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers” by Mikkel Aaland is a good guide for those just starting to dip their toes into the image cataloguing waters of DAM.

“Now just a minute” I can hear you say. “Lightroom 3 is just around the corner.” (or at least we hope) “Why do I want to purchase a book based on Lightroom 2?” Others might add “Just a sec, didn’t you recommend Nathaniel Coalson’s book “Lightroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process?”

Both are good and valid questions which I’ll address after the jump . . .

Full disclaimer – I organize the Denver Photowalk Meetup Group. In order to keep this group free to members I solicit sponsorship from various companies in the industry. O’Reilly Media sponsors the group with in-kind donations about which I publish reviews and/or auction-off to the group. This hasn’t influenced my review of this book; I just thought you should know.

Honestly I was “interested” in the need for a Lightroom 2 book so late in that version’s cycle. Various sources indicate that Lightroom 3, which is in Beta testing now, will be offered early next year. Playing with the Beta you’ll see that some aspects of the program have changed but, according to many sources, the true improvements are in the database architecture. This means that, for the most part, the user interface will be little changed from v. 2.x.

So, how does this influence the desirability of Mr. Aaland’s book?

Well, I stand beside my previous statement – “If you’re in the market for a single Lightroom 2 book – buy Nathaniel Coalson’s book – “Lightroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process?”. But now I’ve got a caveat , if you are very new to digital photography, DAM and the idea of a workflow you might find “Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers” a little easier to handle than Nathaniel’s offering.

Don’t worry – that sounds like a bit of a cop-out to me too, but hear me out.

Quite a few people I meet through the Denver Photowalk group are overwhelmed by the whole idea of post-processing, file systems and PIEware (Parametric Image Editing software). They want to take pictures, download them to the computer and enjoy. If they even think about some form of DAM software they want everything, and I mean everything, spelled out.

This is where Mr. Aaland’s book might have a leg up on Nathaniel’s.

“Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers” demonstrates almost every possible feature available in Lightroom 2

Now, having used Lightroom since its first Beta release, getting a full explanation of every bell and whistle isn’t really important to me. However, if you are new to Lightroom and don’t feel comfortable exploring around in a multi-faceted image program this book will be very helpful. Nathaniel’s book skips some of the baby steps or relegates them to iconographic references. Mikkel goes through everything – you want to know about it, you’ll find it here – trust me.

The layout is fairly typical for an instructional book. There are twelve chapters in all. They cover: import, export, the Library module, slide shows, printing, web galleries, with an additional 5 chapters devoted to the important Develop module.

Each chapter begins with a paragraph summary of what will be presented along with a short list of chapter contents. Within each chapter the screen captures are clear with helpful highlighting when needed. Complicated or important steps are covered in depth pop-outs colored purple for easy identification (it looks better than it sounds). Mikkel explains each step very clearly and I was never left scratching my head, wondering what came next.

Once again I learnt something new about Lightroom that I had not seen in any previous book. That fact alone should convince you that if you really want to get the most out of Lightroom having at least one good guidebook to the program is a necessity.

One of the “hooks” to Mikkel’s book is that he travels to exotic locales with a group of photographers and Adobe programmers to put Lightroom through its paces. It is an interesting mix (here they travel to New Zealand – it volume one it was Iceland) and as a bonus you get a few tips from the pros about processing your images. I’ve got a few things I want to try – Angela Drury’s toning and Peter Krogh’s black point settings for starters.

Are there things I don’t like about “Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers”?

Sure there are – it wouldn’t be much of a review if it was all praise now would it?

Much like Scott Kelby’s book on Lightroom, Mikkel and his publishers have decided to put images front and center while moving text to side columns on either page. This seems intuitive in a photography book – but it stinks. Text columns are wide enough for six words each which makes for choppy reading and means that text doesn’t always line up with photographic plates it is meant to explain.

In at least one instance a purple pop-out interrupts the flow of a chapter with information that could easily have been left until later. These pop-outs could simply be left until the end of each chapter or put into an appendix that highlights more detail than the chapter text provides for those that need it.

Lastly, and it pains me to say it, the photography just isn’t that inspiring. For a book whose theme is “a bunch of photographers get together and use Lightroom for image manipulation and DAM” the image quality needs to be a notch or three higher. Right across from the introduction is the first full page image in the book and to me it looks out of focus (and slightly boring). Photographers want good imagery in their books and these photographers deserve better representation (I know that Peter Krogh and Michael Reichmann can do better).

The Bottom Line

I liked Mikkel Aaland’s book “Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers.”

If I was in the market for a Lightroom 2 book I’d certainly pick it up – it is a solid introduction to the myriad of features Lightroom has on offer. I’ll even recommend it to those who have a Lightroom book such as Nathaniel’s workflow book and want something a little more bread-and-butter.

If you are new to DAM software, just purchased or are thinking of purchasing Lightroom 2, and need a basic introduction to the program then Mikkel Aaland’s “Photoshop Lightroom 2 Adventure: mastering adobe’s next-generation tool for digital photographers” is a solid purchase. If you are slightly more advanced, run circles around adobe Bridge and Photoshop then I’d recommend Nathaniel Coalson’s “Lightroom 2: Streamlining your Digital Photography Process”

Details

Author – Mikkel Aaland
Publisher - O’Reilly Media
Published in - October, 2008
List Price – $44.99
Buy it at:
O’Reilly Media
or
Amazon.com

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Reviews and tagged with book review, lightroom 2, review, tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.