Product Description

“Clear, concise, lively, well-organized and opinionated.”—Popular Photography and Imaging In this thorough revision of his best-selling guide, Rick Sammon covers all the steps in the digital photographic process. The book teaches basic technical picture taking and the art of photography, plus introductory and advanced digital techniques.

Orchestrating over 1,000 images into easy-to-read lessons, Sammon uses an approach of "learning to see and seeing to learn" with pairs of images, software screen shots, and the best photographs from his own shooting assignments.

New for this edition, all the image editing tips feature the popular Adobe Photoshop® Elements®; file format discussions now include working with Camera RAW files; and more than 170 new color images have been added. 1000 color photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #236142 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

About the Author
Rick Sammon is the author of the Complete Guide to Digital Photography 2.0, Exploring the Light, and other books. He travels widely on photography assignments and to give his popular workshops and seminars. He lives in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Customer Reviews

An enjoyable but not completely satisfying read.
I'm giving this book four stars based almost solely on Rick Sammon's enthusiasm. He is obviously a person who enjoys what he does and likes interacting with others. His writing was lively enough so I read the book in one afternoon. The bottom line problem with this guide is the same bottom line problem I'm finding in all digital photography guides I've encountered. The first thing they want to do is teach you a little basic photography knowledge and the next thing they do is tell you how to use Photoshop tricks to create "artful photos" that, in effect, minimizes the need for knowledge of basic photography. Photography is more than tricks and "secrets of the pros" and Photoshop is a fine tool for photographers to augment their work. Unfortunately, most digital photography teaching vehicles today emphasize the ghastly and tasteless manipulations in Photoshop and fail to emphasize learning basic camera technique. To Rick Sammon's credit, he does provide a measure of how to use tools available for in-camera control as opposed to relying solely on Photoshop corrections and manipulations in post production. But when the chapters on the various Photoshop tools and manipulations come into play, it's still a lot of ghastly and tasteless trickery that takes center stage.

The higher quality, professional and advanced amateur digital cameras that are available today are so sophisticated, it's difficult to really screw up your pictures if you have a basic grasp of photography and how to use the camera's features. Despite this, a lot of people are screwing up their pictures in post production by relying on photo editing software. Sammon's examples in the Photoshop Elements portions of this book point this out very clearly. The "before Photoshop" photos are often preferable to the "after Photoshop" photos. I'm not speaking of basic operations such as minor color corrections, cropping, sharpening, etc. I'm speaking of the use of filters and borders and the cut-and-paste collages that Sammon often refers to as "artistic" which are, in fact, perfect examples of over-processed pseudo-art.

I'm not really picking on Rick Sammon here. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I've enjoyed Sammon's writing and photography in other publications as well. It's just that we really don't need more people playing around with their computers to create the photographic equivalent of black velvet paintings.

Simply the best!
Lots of people claim to be digital photography experts and will sell you a book. However, Rick Sammon actually IS the expert. This book is written in a down to earth manner but addresses photographers at all levels and makes some more difficult concepts very easy to understand with a laid back approach. Part of the magic in this very large and all-inclusive book (almost 500 pages) is that Sammon has "been there" and "done that." The author has traveled far and wide and is considered an expert in travel and wildlife photography. Many of his shots are used to illustrate key concepts throughout the book and are presented in vibrant and accurate color. The book comes with a tutorial CD as well. All in all, this book is a great value and great addition to the libraries of photographers of all skill levels.

A better than average book for beginners
First let me say that I enjoy Mr. Sammons's style of writing. It keeps one interested even when covering dry material.

This is a large book full of information that will not appeal to all readers. This book (I would assume) covers the broad spectrum of digital photography in a general way. For example the printing section was of no interest to me as I do not print my own photos. It will help other readers I'm sure but not me.

I saw other reviews that commented about how this book was laid out. I would guess that Mr. Sammon's had his reasons for doing it this way. I had no problem with it because when in doubt check the Index!

It's still a worthwhile read for beginners and for intermediate photographers.