Review: Digital Photography - The Missing Manual
Digital Photography is one of the easiest tech fields for anyone to jump into. Since cameras have been around for what seem like, forever, it's hard to find anyone who is intimidated by them. Everyone knows how to take a picture. Look through the view finder, instruct subjects to say 'cheese', and press the button. Pretty simple. The problem is, not everyone knows how to take a great picture, or what to do with it when they do.
This is where 'Digital Photography: The Missing Manual' comes in. It's a great book by experts Chris Grover and Barbara Brundage. As we go into the holidays, digital cameras are on many wish lists, and even if you already have a camera, this full color book will definitely enhance your skills. Mac or PC, this book takes an approach that will help you choose the best camera for you & get high quality results from it.
In Depth Basics:
Most amateur photographers needs are pretty basic. We want to take a picture to capture a special time, and then share it with someone. This book covers that basic need. It is broken up into four main parts: Digital Camera Basics, Organizing Your Photos, Editing Your Photos, and Sharing your photos. Each of these will break into more granular chapters that expand of the ideas behind the particular topic.
To get you started, they introduce you to the digital camera basics. They cover different types of cameras, memory cards, photography jargon, lighting, settings, composition, and much more. All of these choices can be overwhelming, even for an intermediate level photographer.
After you have hand picked the perfect camera, if you don't know anything about composition (like 80% of the people taking pictures), your photos will look average, even on a high dollar DSLR camera. The composition hints and tips are extremely valuable, and I find myself referencing to the 'kids & school performances' section quite often. Since i have been using the tips provided, I have found that my pictures are looking much better.
Organizing:
Once your pictures are looking good (hopefully!), you will want to import them into your computer. More than likely you will use some sort of organizing tool, such as Photoshop Elements, Easy Share, Windows XP itself, or my personal favorite non-mac tool, the free Picasa.
Once you have them organized just so, you will probably want to move them to an online site, and they do a good job at walking you through the process with the most popular ones: Snapfish, Easy Share, Flickr, and Shutterfly.
There are several other alternatives available online, but they chose the most popular. For the most part, most services work the same way. To cover every service would be beyond the scope of the book.
The authors end the section by showing you how to backup your photos, which is definitely one of the most important steps, that many people overlook. It's a shame too, because we take more pictures digitally than we would ever consider taking with a film based camera. Digital images are free, and even if you don't get the shot you were looking for, you can simply repeat it, and it doesn't cost you a thing. With this amount of picture taking, we have much more to lose. Most of us are one hard drive crash away from losing all of our digital photos.
Editing - Good to Great.
Combined into one chapter are some basic editing for the aforementioned organizing programs, Picasa and Easy Share. You are given instructions to some very basic stuff. Red eye removal, cropping, straightening, and color balance. Most of these programs only offer rudimentary editing tools, and a more advanced user is going to want more power, and will likely turn to Photoshop Elements.
The follow up chapters, are devoted to Photoshop Elements. They go in depth with this program, and teach you all of the basics I just mentioned, but also show you how to do some advanced techniques. Resizing, color correction, retouching, and Elements quick fixes. If your image editor of choice is Photoshop Elements, you will benefit the most from this book. Since Brundage writes a series of Photoshop Elements books, you are truly getting instruction from an expert.
Photo Sharing:
You've done the hard work of learning how to buy a camera, take great pictures with it, and how to make them look better with your image editor. There is only one thing left to do - share them with the world. You can do this by sharing them with an online service, printing them out, emailing them, and putting them onto a coffee mug. That great shot of you standing in front of the Washington Monument on a T-Shirt would make a great holiday gift (not!).
I was very pleased that they cover file sizes in the section on how to 'Email' your photo. Non-tech geeks have no clue that the 7 Megapixel image is going to take forever to download and fill up your Inbox. That's for geeks like us to worry about. I had a friend that would send me pictures of his kids every other week. Don't get me wrong.. I appreciated he wanted to share his life, but he had no concept of file size. Thank goodness for these new photo sharing sites. You can now add your photos online, and then simply send a hyperlink to friends and family.
If you want something more tangible, you will be interested in the printing section. Great detail is spent on talk of resolution, paper, and how to get the best out of your particular printer. I am glad they didn't skimp on this chapter. Photo paper and ink are the two biggest cash drainers. I continually see people print out sub-standard images, simply because they haven't learned how to tweak the settings of their printer or the editing program.
Final Thoughts:
The authors have done an excellent job at taking the novice through all of the steps of digital photography. The whole gamut is covered, beginning with camera selection and ending with sharing your photos. The full color examples add clarity and enhance the pages throughout the entire book.
Most of the content is aimed at the PC user running Windows XP, but the Mac user will benefit from most of the chapters. Many of the online services and organizing tools are available on Mac & PC, so the instructions will be quite similar. The only one I can think of that isn't Mac compatible is Picasa.
Predominantly Mac users are going to use iPhoto or Photoshop Elements, but the techniques can be applied to most image editing programs. Whether you are giving a camera as a gift, or if you are aspiring to learn more about digital photography, this book is a must.
Summary
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