Comments about oreilly Digital Photography Expert Techniques, Second Edition:

I was anxiously awaiting this title to arrive in the mail, particularly because of its emphasis on "expert" techniques. Though I didn't find every page riveting, the book on the whole fulfilled my expectations.

If you have jumped into the world of serious amateur or semi-pro photography, you no doubt own an SLR camera. It is a must. After continuing to shoot JPG for awhile, you venture into the world of RAW files. This is a whole new world with incredible possibilities. What you quickly find is your hard drive quickly fills up with RAW files and you have a hard time knowing how work with those files in any sort of time-conscious workflow. You let them pile up into a perpetual of backlog.

Ken Milburn knows his stuff, and has developed a highly effective workflow for processing, organizing, presenting and publishing his photos. His experience shows through in each chapter as he opens up his entire process for everyone who reads this title to learn from. Though I found some of my own workflow techniques already matched his suggestions, I found numerous suggestions I hadn't previously known or considered that have helped improve my effectiveness. Efficient and effective workflow is the overriding theme of this title.

Though much of the books training focuses on post production, namely in Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, a couple of chapters at the beginning get you optimizing and improving your in camera approach as well. Past the workflow theme, there is plenty of time spent on giving your photos the "wow factor" you have always wanted. What I enjoyed most was the improved techniques taught in the "non-destructive" phase of digitally developing your photos.

I recommend this book to anyone who is shooting a high volume of photos, particularly those that may be working their way into portrait photography for hire. Adding the habits and knowledge gained from this title will make you a much better professional as well as the ability to output top notch photos.

Comments about oreilly Digital Photography Expert Techniques, Second Edition:

As a photoshop novice, I was interested to see what I could get out of the software. Ken Milburn's book is a fantastic starting point - it covers, in generous detail, every aspect of the photographic workflow, from setting up your camera through to setting up and using Adobe Photoshop to process your images.

The writing is clear and concise, as you'd expect from an O'Reilly book. Ken clearly knows a lot about his subject and litters his pages with tons of useful advice and practical examples not only of what to do, but also *why* you should be doing it this way.

Several co-workers have pestered for a look at the book, at which point they promptly went off and bought their own copies!

I'd say that you need to know a little about your digital camera, and have a passing knowledge of Photoshop in order to get the best out of this book, but I'd certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to get more from their photography.