Adobe has made available a free 30-day trial of Photoshop Lightroom 2, the image management and processing software for Macintosh and PCs. To make best use of the trial, I recommend getting ahold of a how-to book beacuse there are way too many features to figure it all out on your own. There are several book choices, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book by Martin Evening is a good choice.
The book is quite thorough and complete, covering every aspect of Ligthroom 2. The chapters in the book more or less follow the order of workflow a photographer will use. Lightroom 2 has five modules: Library, Develop, Printing, Slideshow and Web.
After an introductory chapter, the books starts with importing which is how you get images into Lightroom 2. The Importing Photos chapter covers every possible way of importing including from a CF card, from a folder, directly from the camera, etc. Most people will probably do things just one way. For example, I copy files from a card to a folder on the hard drive. Then I convert all my RAW files to DNG with Adobe DNG Converter which puts them in their final folder. So I import from a folder without moving.
Next the book describes the Library module, how to manage photos in the Library module and working with catalogs.
The Develop module is treated next. Develop is where you make image adjustments to the exposure, white balance and everything else that has to do with how the image looks. There’s a separate chapter covering Black & White conversion. Another chapter covers sharpening and noise reduction.
Finally there are chapters that cover the output functions: Printing module, Slideshow module and Web module.
Negatives
- The book is long–600 pages. The length is probably a function of the complexity of Lightroom 2 more than anything. But is too long to read all the way through in a day or so. The best I could do was skim each page to see what subjects are covered, and then go back to them later when needed.
- The book is also heavy. It is printed on very heavy, slick stock that weighs a quite a lot. I tried reading it laying down and my arms got tired from holding the book up. Like working out on bench press, you may want a spotter to help lift the book off your chest!
- The choice of typeface make the book difficult to read. All the text is printed in a sans serif typeface. What ever happened to good old Times Roman? Sans Serif may be fine for a one-sentence picture caption, but it makes reading a whole paragraph a chore.
Final analysis: If you want to use Photoshop Lightroom 2, you will need a reference book. This book can fill that need.
Title: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers
Author: Martin Evening
Publisher: Adobe Press www.adobepress.com
published by Peachpit, 1249 Eighth Street, Berkeley CA 94710 www.peachpit.com
Date of Publication: 2009
By this book and other books about Lightroom 2 from amazon.com
