Product Description
In the new edition of this practical guide, master photographer Ellen Anon and digital-imaging expert Tim Grey show you how to capture the beauty of nature by shooting the best possible photos from the start—and then getting the most out of your images at your desktop. You’ll find eye-opening techniques, workflow ideas, and terrific Photoshop tools, plus a host of valuable tips and stunning examples from some of the most esteemed professional nature photographers working today.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 23 reviews)

Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers

After purchasing three other books on CS3, this was the most applicable for someone that is primarily focused on nature and landscape photography. The authors introduce you to their work flow, which I find works well. They guide you through the entire process, beginning at taking your picture, to setting up your preferences, to final print. It leaves room for your own personal settings without "directing" you to do it only their way. The authors not only explain the "how", but the "why." This was something I found lacking in the other books, even the official Adobe workbook. The lessons are easy to follow and understand. You don't have to be a computer expert to work with this book, but basic knowledge of CS3 helps, although not required. If getting the most out of your landscape/nature images with CS3 is your goal, then this is your book. A very good "A to Z" instructional guide. Highly recommended.
August 07, 2008

Found It At Last!!

For several years I have attempted to gain at least a small degree of skill doing some basic image editing using Photoshop. Each attempt was accompanied by the latest and greatest book claiming to be the source of everything needed to become quickly proficient with Photoshop. And these books tend to get read -- perhaps all the way to chapter 3 -- where I become entirely overwhelmed by the minutiae and lose complete interest, especially since the book is only introducing details and accomplishing nothing useful. I was skeptical when I purchased this book, assuming it would lead to the same dead end. I have been very pleasantly surprised, not to mention pleased with the progress I have made -- right through the final chapter!

I think several things make this book stand out. The authors have wisely chosen not to attempt to document every single feature of this huge and complicated software tool. Often they note, in passing, areas that they do not plan to cover -- and why (because the software was designed for a wide audience and nature photographers only need a sub-set of the available features). The book progresses very logically, providing you just what you need to do "the next thing." In practice, this means that you only need to learn a reasonable number of things in order to begin to see some success. As well, you then begin to build on these skills -- but never to the point where you become frustrated with the process. Finally, they provide options for you to consider and try, typically suggesting that you use the method most comfortable for you. In hindsight, I believe that many of the earlier books that I worked with often required adherence to the author's proscribed ideas about how to do this or that. It was quite nice to discover, for example, that a "keyboard person" was not forced to use the mouse -- and vice versa.

I can certainly recommend this to advanced beginner and intermediate photographers -- not JUST Nature Photographers. If you need to work with some of the advanced options that Photoshop offers then this may not be the right book for you. If you have tried many times to succeed with Photoshop I urge you to try again with this book -- you just may find that you will succeed this time!!
July 27, 2008

Handy reference

This is a pretty good book filled with quite a few tips. The writing style was difficult for me to enjoy per se but the content is there. It was extremely distracting however for nearly every photograph in the book to have the caption "Photo by Ellen Anon". Over and over and over....Even multiple steps in a procedure apparently required a credit on each photo. Just a small gripe but it would have been easier to say at the beginning all photos by Ellen Anon unless otherwise noted.
July 08, 2008

(Nearly) ideal for the Photoshop beginner

I had been muddling through Photoshop for years, learning how to do things mostly on my own. This book, however, was an eye-opener. First off, although being nature photographer-centered doesn't mean it is impractical for other subjects, the nature focus does preclude the types of portrait and architecture examples of other books that really don't help the nature-oriented photographer very much. I find this to be a big strength.

The book is fairly inclusive of most of the basic tools needed to produce quality photos, but some areas are a bit lacking, notably with respect to sharpening. Specifically, there is no discussion of high-pass sharpening, nor of the multipass sharpening process (capture, creative, and output sharpening) that Adobe is now embracing. If you are interested in getting the best out of your photos, I strongly suggest googling these two subjects and learning more.

This book, as do all books on the subject, also suffers from that fact that parts of it are partially obsolete almost from the time it was printed because of advances in plug-in technology. This is especially the case with the recent upgrade of Camera Raw to version 4.1 (now available for free download from Adobe's website), which has tools (sharpening, notably) that could not be covered by this book because ACR 4.1 didn't exist at the time it was written. Again, this isn't a flaw of the book, just the nature of the beast. Heck, I'm sure someone reading this review a year or so from now will be remarking how obsolete ACR 4.1 is, once ACR 4.2 comes out.

I like the fact that there are two authors for the book because they each have ideas on how to best accomplish their goals. This leads to multiple options being presented to the reader. The sidebars by well-known photographers are also quite valuable, although it seems that they were written based on earlier versions of the book (i.e., once centered on CS2, and possibly CS). As such, some of that information is a bit dated. Still, there is a lot of valuable information in there.

I can't comment on the tutorial CD, because I haven't used it, but for those of you who prefer to learn by doing, I imagine it is a very valuable resource.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book to any newcomer to Photoshop who shoots primarily nature photos.
May 30, 2008

As good as it gets

As a web designer I've been using Photoshop professionally for years. I've also worked on lots of photographs, both my own and those I've gotten from clients. I don't need a how to book on layers, cropping and levels. I've got a good understanding of the basic Photoshop tools, and have benefitted from Scott Kelby's Photoshop CS for Photographers. But Kelby's book is a recipe book both useful and well presented, but I want more.

What I want to do now is take my own photography to another level. Past a certain point, improving becomes less a matter of collecting tricks and recipes and more a matter of learning the entire workflow from experts. For that a basic how-to cookbook is no longer of much use to me. I could probably spend a lot of time working out a good workflow and set of procedures through trial and error, but why not take advantage of the experience of those who have already taken the art of nature photography editing to a high place?

Enter Photoshop CS3 for Nature Photographers. As one reviewer has stated, much of the introductory Photoshop material is covered in other books, but not in quite the same way. Photoshop has many tools, each of which has many settings and options. It's perfectly possible to be familiar with one tool or filter in one context and not realize that it can be used in combination with another tool to achieve a completely different result. I once read that when Einstein proposed his theory of relativity maybe three people in the world understood it. I wonder if more than three people in the world completely understand all of what can be done with Photoshop. What I was looking for and found here is an expansion of my Photoshop horizons, a deeper exploration of the art and science of nature photography and photo editing.

Anon and Grey offer an excellent look over the shoulder of experts in both practice of nature photography and in the use of Photoshop as a digital darkroom. I can't emphasize strongly enough how helpful that approach is for someone who has some Photoshop chops or who has used the program for another end and who wants to get great results with nature photos. Their workflow is time tested and produces excellent results

And nature photograph editing benefits from following a slightly different approach from that of product photography, with which I have some experience, portraiture, photojournalism and so on. Again, I'm struck with how specific and helpful the presented workflow, and the mindset that using such a workflow creates is. And placing editing in context with a specific photographic goal informs my picture taking too.

I recommend this book to anybody interested in nature photography who has at least some experience with Photoshop, though a dedicate beginner could work through the introductory phases with this volume. For someone who has used Photoshop in another context and wants to expand into the nature photography realm this book is brilliant.
February 24, 2008

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