Our new book The Photoshop Darkroom 2: Creative Digital Transformations is now shipping on Amazon, where you can find excerpts and other information about the book. I know some of you have been waiting a long time for this book; I hope you’ll find it worth the wait. Please let me know.
If you were selected for a review copy, that should also be arriving shortly.
We are very excited, this is almost like a new child. Well, not really. But we are happy to have our book finally see the light of day.
One question I get asked often is how the new book compares to the first Photoshop Darkroom book. Is it a sequel? Not so much. Is it updated for the latest software?
We wrote The Photoshop Darkroom 2 with the most current version of Photoshop available (CS5), but these books are not about bells and whistles, software menus, or new features. Most of the techniques shown in either of the Photoshop Darkroom books could be accomplished with versions of Photoshop going back quite a ways.
The Photoshop Darkroom 2 is more like a companion volume than a sequel. We want each book to stand on its own, but at the same time we don’t want to repeat ourselves too much. Photoshop has so many aspects that it is easy for us to explain different techniques that parallel each other. For example, in the first Photoshop Darkroom book multi-RAW processing is explained using Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). In the new book, it is primarily explained using Adobe Lightroom.
As the subtitle suggests, the focus of The Photoshop Darkroom 2 is transformations. This means changing one thing into something new. The book starts with simple techniques for fixing people and places—by the end of the book we show you how to create entirely new worlds in Photoshop.
Harold Davis
16 Feb 2011Q: I am interested in purchasing your two Photoshop Darkroom books, but I have a question. I use PSE7 and just purchased PSE9……would these books be useful to me even though I do not use Photoshop?
A: This is a good question. With PSE9 you can do most of what you can do in Photoshop itself, except you are limited to the RGB color space. PSE9 lets you really do layers and masking, which is the key Photoshop feature and integral to the Photoshop Darkroom books. However, there are some limitations in terms of my books.
Most of the conceptual stuff in the Photoshop Darkroom applies perfectly. The material in PD1 that covers LAB color (this is a large case study in the first book) will not work in PSE9 because of the color space limitation I mentioned. The techniques involving RAW conversions, layering, and masking that I explain in both books will work, but you should understand that the specifics of the menus and look-and-feel of the interface will be different. Also, one of the case studies in PD2 shows how Lightroom interacts with Photoshop, and that won’t help you.
Just as an overall estimate, I’d say 30-40% works the same in PSE9, another 30-40% will work but you’ll need to finesse things a bit, and maybe 20% of the techniques won’t work.