Photoshop Lightroom Adventure: Mastering Adobe's Next-Generation Tool for Digital Photographers [Paperback]

As Mikkel Aaland wrote such splendid guides to Adobe's Photoshop and Elements, I looked forward with high expectations to his Lightroom (LR) manual - appreciating the deliberate delay in publication so as to update the text to LR's 1.1 version. The illustrations, some double-paged, are stunning images of colorful summer-time Iceland, photographed by a dozen pro's field-testing LR prior to release. Equally well-done are the technical aspects for using the numerous sliders and menus of Lightroom's Develop and Print modules; as the title intimates, the illustrations serve as the engine for color mangement instructions. If only the book's masthead had represented the actual content ("... Color Management with Lightroom"), rather than as a master guide to a versatile tool, I would have top-rated it. Instead, the title proves misleading, for this book comes not even close to being a comprehensive user guide to Lightroom.

Regrettably, it appears that Mr Aaland over-reached, or was pressed for time, adding the first three chapters on Workspace, Importing and the critically vital Library module as seeming afterthoughts -- and not very good ones at that. I found the first two chapters to be rather superficial, but became aghast by page 45 (Library Module) where you are told to hold down the Alt/Option key when clicking on the LR icon/alias to bring up the 'Select Catalog' dialog box - as described (for a PC at least) you'll merely get the desktop icon's Properties box - no savior there. The proper command (for PC) is to hold down the Ctrl-key while clicking the LR desktop icon. That may sound trivial - but just wait till you get the dreaded "Catalog Corrupted" or "Can't find Catalog" death message - LR won't even start. What a panic ... until you can locate either the current or a backup catalog database to retrieve your thousands of images. Nearly as bad is the author's recommendation to enable the 'Write XMP to image file' box during Import, an infamous bug (see User Forum) that can bring even a quad-core gorilla to its knees, and is best left disabled, updating XMP files manually only when needed for Export.

These no-no's apart, the Library module is treated more like a casual aside than the critically important find engine it ought to be. Here's where you import images, then name, rate, flag and tag them. One target for LR (great color management aside) is for professionals to find the pictures they want from among literally tens of thousands. To find those needles in a haystack, you have to spend considerable time on planning, and a lot of effort, on suitably tagging each image so that you may retrieve it readily at a later date. LR offers numerous ways, including the date of a shoot, but for most users keyword tags and suitably-named folders are vital to retrieve those photos of Jill's wedding, or that little chapel in Italy. The author treats keywords in just one column of half-page text without any hints at organization as by (for instance) WHAT, WHERE, WHO, WHEN at the very least. One reason must be his own apparent lack of structure: using a three-part tag like 'Adobe Photoshop Lightroom' (as he does), then searching on the term "Adobe Lightroom" is bound to miss his photos labeled 'Adventure' or 'Iceland'. Having tightly organized one-word tags is essential to avoid misspellings, or variations on a tag - 'church', for example, might miss 'temple' or 'mosque'. The Find pane, likewise, gets brushed off - leaving the reader pretty much at the mercy of the 'Help' section. Adobe's downloadable 'User Manual' for the 1.1 version, by the way, is a marvel of clarity.

As mentioned, the Develop module is where the Aaland of yore shines, and would make a colorful hands-on companion to Martin Evening's "The Lightroom Book" [better yet with the latter's free ver 1.1 supplement]. It's the tedious but oh-so-critical Library module that gets short shrift - a bit like the tail wagging the dog. All told, this is a sumptuous coffeetable travelogue, but a disappointing lightweight in terms of mastering Lightroom's complexities. Let's hope that the version 1.2 (or 2.0) edition brings back 'the old Mikkel'.

This is a high-concept Lightroom guide. Mikkel Aaland convinced Adobe Systems and several other sponsors to send a team of photographers and Adobe personnel to Iceland to take pictures and process them with the software that came to be Lightroom. (Too bad they didn't decide to take a book reviewer.)

In "Lightroom Adventure" Mikkel Aaland describes the features of the new workflow software which enables digital photographers to process digital images from intake to the computer to output either as prints, slideshows or websites. The author describes how to use the essential buttons and sliders in each of Lightroom's modules to create an effective piece of work. As in most of his work, Aaland gives clear descriptions that anyone can follow.

Like most of the Lightroom books that I've read, the author presumes the reader understands the importance of tone and color controls. But, if a digital photography beginner tried to follow any of these books, he or she would soon be at a loss. Beginner's need something like the "Photoshop Artistry" books that Barry Haynes wrote, where, e.g., he explained what exposure was and related it to the tonal range of an image. Without such a background the beginner may well flounder about, never quite understanding why to make adjustments, and not processing an image well enough to realize artistic vision.

This book will provide more experienced users with the essential tools to process a picture as effectively as they might in Adobe Camera Raw. However, it does not show the full power of Lightroom as well as Scott Kelby's "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers,The (Voices That Matter)."

This is the first Lightroom book to include the upgraded tools provided by the 1.1 update that Adobe provided for Lightroom. (The publisher Peachpit has provided an online addendum to Scott Kelby's book that is available to individuals who purchased that book, and provides a free 1.1 update to Martin Evening's book to anyone who establishes an account (which costs nothing). The latter is as comprehensive as anything I've seen about the 1.1 update.)

One may ask, what benefit flowed to readers from the junket that gave its name to this book? One of the Iceland crew was Peter Krogh, the author of "The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers (O'Reilly Digital Studio)", the definitive work on digital image asset management. I expected that Krogh's participation would have given us an extensive lesson in organizing catalogs, archiving files and keywording. Instead "Lightroom Adventure" provides just about the same explanation of keywords as all of the other Lightroom books.

Many of the Iceland photographs are included and serve as illustration for the use of Lightroom. There was even a section of the book entitled "Develop Recipes from Iceland" that included before and after pictures taken by the crew, with a brief explanation of which sliders had been moved to achieve the result. That was useful, but it didn't reveal any difference between Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw in achieving those results.

I'm a big believer in Lightroom, with its great asset management capabilities and its easy-to-use tools for comparing images and making adjustments. As a result of these capabilities, I've changed the order of my workflow, the way I make adjustments, and how I catalog my work. But with the possible exception of Rob Sheppard's "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for Digital Photographers Only (For Only)" (and then only in a small way) none of the books I've read tells you how to use Lightroom to improve your workflow or how to use the tools in new ways to create better images. For now, photographers will have to learn how to use the sliders and by trial and error find the benefits of Lightroom.

After these grumbles, one might wonder how I can still give this book a four star rating. Well, when it comes to teaching a photographer how to use Lightroom, this book will do as good a job as most of the available books, and better then a few. But to really get the most out of Lightroom, the photographer will have to put himself into the workflow.

I'm not a pro. I need clear and easy to follow directions and, as a visual learner, lots of visual examples. This book is easy to read (unlike most books on digital photography), beautifully illustrated, and very helpful in learning what is a first rate and user friendly program. I plan to use it in combination with the excellent books by Scott Kelby and Martin Evening, each of which is more encyclopedic.

Among the many strengths of this book is that it's been updated for the vastly improved 1.1 version. The other two books I mentioned have online updates available.

Mark

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