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Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS Review by William Weddle
Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS
I am not a professional photographer, rather an interested hobbyist. I just finished studying Camera Raw by Bruce Fraser. I use the term study, because it is a very "readable", but very technical manual which does a great job of explaining the basics of Camera Raw theory and implementation. I took this book with me on a vacation (it is not for vacation reading)and it honestly took me full week to read, re-read and re-read a third time to begin to fully grasp the beauty of a small book which goes from general theory, narrows the focus down to the working detail and then steps back and ties it all together at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book. Bruce Fraser is clearly a very talented writer and teacher. In addition to covering Camera Raw he also explains the use of the File Browser, Metadata, Workflow and Automation better than any other author I have read. If you are "baffled" by the Adobe Photoshop "Help" files explanation of the above, then just give this book a chance and you will come away feeling very much more in control of your Photoshop CS, your camera and your own "style" of using the above mentioned tools. The "clinical" examples are explained step-by-step with visuals of the actual photos and the computer displays to go along with each step in the production workflow. It is just filled with clinical "pearls" of information which all got highlighted with my yellow magic marker. In fact, when I finished, the whole book was one big yellow page, because it is all there with no wasted verbage.
My only critique is one of the printing format. To explain, I have to tell you that if you use bifocals (like I do) it is very difficult to actually see the small print in some of the displays of the actual Adobe menu boxes that are used as examples on at least every other page. So maybe, if this book is updated and re-published, Mr. Fraser could use larger type size in the examples. The type size of the narrative is perfect.
William E. Weddle, MD