The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers

41. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book explains how to use Lightroom 5 in a very practical way. It's a very good reference book.

I do wish the book were larger so that the screencaps from Lightroom could be larger. Lightroom's dark grey background with light grey text is hard to read in print. Kelby uses red circles to highlight things in the screencaps which helps. If you already have Lightroom, you could just open it up on your computer instead of trying to read the tiny text in the book's images. (I don't currently use Lightroom but have seen it enough to be familiar with its layout which helped.)

The book is broken into chapters covering the different modules. The subsections of those are broken into numbered steps. Though the numbering is sequential, sometimes the steps aren't. That is to say step 3 might not be what follows step 2 but rather another way to accomplish step 2. I would've preferred additional subsections for alternative methods, but I understand it's a huge program and difficult to organize its explanation.

The end of each chapter (save one or two) has a Lightroom Killer Tips section on the topic with key tips for it. Just when I thought he'd forgotten to write how to back up any presets you'd made, I checked the index and got sent to a Killer Tips section with the answer.

The book also includes a white balance card in the back and a lot of extras you can download online. I haven't checked out the latter yet but will once I start using Lightroom.

Kelby's book was really helpful in giving me a sense of whether I would like Lightroom or not. I think I will. He also gives lots of advice on the best ways to set things up to avoid hassles and make things easier. He also covers what to do in Lightroom and what to do in Photoshop (and how to get there and back).

Aside from the small print in the screengrabs, it's a very readable technical manual.


A year ago on TTaT: Angel & Faith: Live Through This