Now that Lightroom has been on the market for a little while, it may be time for books to appear that tell users not just what the effect of each of the sliders and buttons is, but how to use the software to process pictures in a better way than its more expensive big brother, Photoshop. John Beardsworth, a perceptive and thoughtful photographer and writer promises that this book “is not a feature list…but does assume… [the reader]… doesn’t need too much low-level guidance….”
The book is nicely laid out with each set of facing pages dealing with a single subject with several screen captures keyed to a numbered workflow that deals with that subject. Throughout the book Beardsworth emphasizes that Lightroom’s strong point is to allow the photographer to process large numbers of images quickly. There are subjects like “Adding structure > Collections”, “Recovery and the white point” and “Black and white > time savers”. In a section called “Advanced topics”, the author includes topics like “The Polarized Image” (get the effect by using the Color Adjustments saturation and luminance sliders), “Creative vignetting” and “Photoshop workflow > Blended exposures”. Each of these subjects is easy to understand, given the author’s accessible writing style.
Yet what the book contains is mostly a less than complete feature list. The reader who is past the low-level guidance stage will not find much new here. Moreover, Beardsworth may be wrong in his assumption that Lightroom’s main benefit is a better way to process large numbers of images. My own feeling is that Lightroom generally offers a better front end for image processing than Photoshop’s Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw which are part of Photoshop, not because of its ability to process large numbers of pictures (the late Bruce Frazer often showed us how to do that with Photoshop), but because the entire process, including asset management, is so completely integrated.
Advanced photographers will be highly interested in moving images back and forth between Lightroom and Photoshop to do things like selective adjustment and sharpening where version 1.0 of Lightroom is lightweight. Unfortunately, this aspect of image processing was mentioned too briefly in this book. (Version 1.1 of Lightroom, which is available for free download by Lightroom owners, offers much improved sharpening features, although this book was published at a time when the features were not available for the author to consider.)
Photographers who are interested in covering all of the features list would be better served by reading Scott Kelby’s “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers” Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers,The (Voices That Matter). Meanwhile there is still room for a comprehensive book aimed at advanced Lightroom users.