Books

Here is a selection of photography books I have read.

Understanding Exposure – Bryan Peterson

A good book if you are a beginner in photography. It teaches you all the concepts of exposure, aperture, shutterspeed and so on. It is a book on the basics, but even if you are a bit more experienced I can recommend it just because of all the beautiful inspiring photos in it. I still sometimes flip through it just because of the photographs.

 

The Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Digital Photographers – Scott Kelby

A very practical book on photoshop. Kelby does not explain the theory behind the techniques, instead the book if full of examples. Recommended for beginners in Adobe Photoshop, but I would also recommend a more theoretical book to get a better understanding.

 

Photoshop LAB Color – Dan Margulis

Interesting book with lots of techniques in LAB color space. Margulis explains how LABs “imaginary colors”, give it an edge in many situations where you have areas which are both extremely bright and highly saturated. RGB just cant represent those colors and so they are blown out. You will among other things learn how to increase color separation, how much the colors in the image varies, which is different from just increasing their saturation and can give some stunning results. I think it’s a hassle to go back and forth between LAB and RGB, because I want to keep my layer structure. This is something that Margualis doesn’t worry about, and he argues that image degradation is not a big problem, and that 8 bit editing is enough by far. Here is a link to a discussion of the book that is very informative: Margulis LAB Color Book – Reading group – Digital Grin Photography Forum