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Photoshop Lab Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace | 
 enlarge | Author: Dan Margulis
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Category: Book
List Price: £39.89
Buy New: £26.64
You Save: £13.25 (33%)
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 136607
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/Cdr
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0321356780
Dewey Decimal Number: 006.686
EAN: 9780321356789
ASIN: 0321356780
Publication Date: August 25, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item! We deliver internationally! All items dispatched locally. Orders only take 3-8 days!
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
not easy to read, but very powerful book September 19, 2008
if you go n check on amazon.com you will find more reviews about this book there. and mostly, they are unhappy. i tend to agree with them on certain points. for one this is not an easy book to read. the author has a very unique style in which he compares what you do in ps with real life examples. so if you dont like that, then you wont like this book either. a reviewer said that the whole info in this book could be summarised to a 10 page pdf (maybe a bit more) which actually is quite true, but the way he explains things makes you really saturate the information. in all fairness, i was not going to give all the stars to this book for being a bit hard to read. but in chapter 11 he gives a tutorial on removing moire from a photograph. honestly, just for this tutorial i would have bought this book. that on its own was so good i was left with no choice but to give full stars.
Magic July 21, 2008
This,somewhat indigestible book, is not for casual reading but for Reference & Practice. If your aim is to attain perfection in colour management - buy it. Results get better and better each time you read it and apply. Knowing your way round Photoshop helps digestion of contents.
 An interesting journey May 7, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I came at this book as a enthusiastic amateur with some fair knowledge of Photoshop based on a lot of reading of the many other books out there. I reckon I am an intermediate level user. I have slightly mixed feelings about the book but definitely think the journey was interesting and worthwhile.
I found this book to be a demanding read and I spent some time trying to figure out why. I came to the following conclusions. Firstly, the book is written by a professional for other professionals. The book's overall approach assumes that the reader has good experience of working in the RGB colour space, and that they are in need of new or alternative solutions to common problems met in that space. Some of the problems discussed I do not have, since I do not face the commercial pressures to produce something publishable from an average original under a time constraint, nor do I get asked by an Art Director to change the colour of a model's jacket on a whim.
Secondly, the LAB colour space requires a rethink on how to approach making changes to a photograph to get what you want. Some of the tools behave differently in that space, most notably Curves. And then there is the split between the luminosity and colour information which is the main reason for going in to the space in the first place. In addition to the complexities of the colour space, there are also the implications for incorporating the techniques into your standard workflow that require some thought.
Lastly, with all due respect to Dan Margulis, I think the book could have been better written. The overall approach is rather old-fashioned, at least to my eyes, in that the main explanation is entirely text based. Where images do occur, and there are a lot of them, they are typically either photographs in intermediate stages of development, where it can be sometimes difficult to tell them apart, or straightforward snapshots of the settings for the tools being used, most often Curves. The only image I can recall that documented an idea, based on a colour wheel, was actually acknowledged to come from a reviewer of the beta editions of the book. In addition, as has been noted by another Amazon reviewer, the images and the accompanying text do not always peacefully coexist on the same page.
HOWEVER, in spite of all the above, I must say I learned a lot from reading the book. It was invaluable to be sitting at the shoulder of a pro and looking at how they evaluate a photograph to identify the problems it has. And the book really gives your Photoshop skills a work out with a concomitant improvement in your understanding of the software.
Advanced users will get the most out of this book, and I would have thought that it was an essential addition to the library of any professional manipulator of photographs. Everybody will get something from the book, since there are, certainly, simple techniques that can be used on a wide range of photographs to improve them.
I intend to return to this book in future to reread it, and in the meantime improve my skills in the RGB color space I regularly inhabit. I will be making use of those skills I did take away from the book to supplement what I know now.
So, 5 stars for the content, -1 star for the overall presentation and style.
Awesome September 24, 2006
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This might look suspect with only glowing reviews, but really this is a great book. I use photoshop for years and have avoided using lab colors. This book will teach you so much stuff. I just can't put it down. Reading this book will teach you techniques which polish up photos with a completely different approach. LAB seperates contrast from color so you can adjust contrast without messing with the color... and vice versa. If you like photoshop this book will take you to a whole new dimension.
Brings a new meaning to LAB April 9, 2006
23 out of 23 found this review helpful
When I started this book I found it quite heavy going, due in the main to the constant references to illustrations and curves being either on the previous pages or next page. After a while I found this very frustrating. However, all the frustration has been well worth it as the content is simply awesome!
My previous excursions into LAB were simply to use the Lightness Channel for sharpening. Not any more!! I am now half way through the book again on my seventh read, and suspect it will not be my last, because as I said earlier, it is not an easy read, but it not only brings a new meaning to LAB it puts a new perspective on Photoshop. (of all the books I have on Photoshop, not one goes into any detail on LAB )
As Dan points out several times in the book it is not the answer to all colour problems, but where it is, it really is!! The impressive thing for me is that once you have understood and mastered his techniques it only takes seconds to transform drab, flat uninspiring images into vibrant works of art. Fantastic!!
If you have images which are flat, need colour correcting, need a colour shift, noise removal, better sharpening, blending......... I could go on and on, then this is the book for you. It is packed from cover to cover with examples of various techniques plus of course a CD of images to work along with.
You may find it heavy going to begin with, but stick with it as the rewards are more than you could ever imagine
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