Best adobe photoshop books according to redditors

When you do your color correction using curves you need a grey target for the grey color dropper. If you select that point using the grey dropper it will help to color correct your photo (assuming you also have pure white and black targets as well).

Edit - Allow me to clarify. What you are talking about is color correcting based on your own perception. The method this article refers to color correcting by the numbers. Color correcting based on what you see is influenced by things such as color casts in camera, white balance, your own perception of color and color casts in your computer hardware. Correcting by the numbers method here uses RGB values to find grey. If you correct by the numbers you could properly color correct a photo even if you are color blind, using a computer monitor with a dark red cast and photo that is improperly white balanced.

Color correcting by the numbers is the best way to to handle color in your photos because it makes it much harder to fail. If you want to know about this method of color correction, I would suggest you consult the bible on the subject Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction (5th Edition) by Dan Margulis.

Forgive me but I’m going to assume you’re aiming for true to life color accuracy over stylistic or creative intent or “looks” (moody, grunge, surreal, dreamy, vintage). If so, getting your WB and exposure correct is the bulk of the work. What follows is to get you the rest of the way there.

Photoshop or Affinity Photo provide more flexibility to do these types of corrections, and with Lightroom it becomes a matter of deciding what you’re willing to trade for correct skin tones: money, time, or creative intent.

If You Have Money

purchase the x-rite color checker passport. Once you get going with this, you’ll get color accurate photos with little effort on your part.

If you’re anal about color accuracy you’ll need to make sure you have a sample photo of the passport using the same lens, and in the same lighting condition, as the photos you want to correct. It has the benefit of also nailing your WB for you.

Going this route, you’ll miss out on learning how to correct colour yourself. It’s all done for you though so you save time. A lot of time.

If You Have Time

There are recommended ratios of R:G:B values for different skin tones depending on race. The singular best source I’ve found on this is Dan Margulis’ book: Professional Photoshop Chapter 3: Color by The Numbers. Get the physical copy if you’re serious about it. The kindle version doesn’t include the disc and the images are heavily compressed, you don’t get to really witness the techniques he’s applying.

Once you know the color theory you’ll know when to use which panel in Lightroom for your correction.

There’s also a YouTube video by PixImperfect that touches on these skin ratios. The host provides a swatch image with the most common ratios that you can reference.

Creative Intent

The most recommended tool is the Tone Curve, but in LR, it acts on the entire image globally. The curve will adjust the luminance value of each channel but in doing so will affect your hue and saturation. You’ll want to be very precise and adjust the curves with intent. Use this if you need subtle corrections. Photoshop has the added advantage of masking and using blend modes with your curves.

Next is the Camera Calibration panel, this is also global, and will adjust your hue or saturation but preserves your luminance values. This is amazing for creative edits.

By far the most forgiving is the HSL panel. It’s what I use only after I’ve settled on a white balance. This is the one tool I wish was available in photoshop and affinity photo.

A more advanced option would be to use an adjustment brush painted over the skin. The adjustment would use the WB slider and the Tint slider. It may seem like less control but if you know your color theory it gets the job done. Do this if you don’t want to affect the color on other parts of the photo. I use this for portraits of people taken over grass. The skin under the chin, nose and cheeks take on a green tint. I only want to target those areas not the rest of the skin which is usually fine.

Measuring The Values

In the Tone Curves panel you can use the selector/sampler (not sure what’s the official name) to hover over somewhere in the images and see the RGB value as well as where it falls on the curve in terms of luminance. I believe the RGB value under the mouse pointer will also appear below the histogram I just can’t remember how to activate it.

I would sample the skin somewhere between the midpoint and 3/4 up the curve. Anything past 3/4 is the highlight region and every hue starts to converge towards white, skewing your reading of what the actual skin hue is.

I hope this helps.

By any chance have you read Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum? It goes into a lot of detail about driving apart similar colors to different areas of the colorspace, and uses canyon images like this one for the examples in many cases.

Margulis’ book “Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction” is based on numbers and has claimed to work with the colorblind. It’s an old book and I know nothing of his new work but might be worth a shot for 5 bucks.

The Classroom in a Book series is AMAZING. It includes a CD/DVD and the lessons go like this...

They give you an image of, say, an old man and the lesson is to remove his wrinkles. Then the book walks you through each step and tool (explaining what they do along the way) and at the end of each lesson you learn a new KEY Photoshop skill.

Learning by example is amazing.

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Photoshop-Cd-Rom/dp/1567615279

You're off to a good start! Photoshop's a lot of fun, and honestly you'll never stop learning cool new techniques/tricks. If you're interested in quickly stepping up your game, I'd suggest giving Scott Kelby's book (one of his many, many Photoshop books) Photoshop Down & Dirty Tricks a read.

It's not a complete "how to do everything" or even a how to do most things book... but what it WILL teach you are the nuts and bolts steps required to pull off a lot of professional Photoshop techniques. It'll also give you a decent working grasp of a lot of the tools that Photoshop has. Basically, this book will allow you to skip ahead in your Photoshop learning/skills past the dreaded plugin phase (a great many Photoshop users at one time or another go through a phase where they use plugins to accomplish things they could better accomplish using Photoshop's own toolkit, and with a finer degree of control to boot).

Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Video-4th-HARRINGTON/dp/0321703553

This is hands down the best book on how to expose images properly that I've ever seen.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0817439390/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

If you're going to get tits deep into photoshop, check out this book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321356780/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1368307335&sr=8-1&pi=SL75

Go get Lightroom 5. It is in beta and it is free.

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom5/

I went to Half Price Books and found this one for $12.00:

https://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Classroom-Book/dp/0321928075/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483558398&sr=1-8&keywords=photoshop+in+a+classroom

If you buy one of these books, make sure it has an intact and unused online access code so you can download the working material files.
I just started doing the course this weekend so I am only through Chapter 1 but I already learned a few things....
I also like the Phlearn videos on Youtube - they have a video series you can buy which is probably really good. I figured I would get a foundation from this book first and then fill in whatever else I need with youtube. I just need to get a handle on navigation and layout so that the videos make more sense!

http://www.moderncolorworkflow.com/dan-margulis

https://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-LAB-Color-Adventures-Colorspace/dp/0321356780

Both are good books on color, color correction and color theory.

+1 for [Art and Science of Digital Compositing]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HHOC8I)


Heres a few more I can recommend:

Digital Compositing for Film and Video

[Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Film and Games]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOPYVIU)

[Maya Python for Games and Film]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005OI23OO)

[Introducing ZBrush 3rd Edition]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118244826)

[Digital Modeling]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QRYPC0)

[The HDRI Handbook 2.0: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VB46ACG)

[Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction, Fifth Edition]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004USQQOC)

[Understanding Exposure, Fourth Edition]
(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0104EOJSK)

There is a classic book out there on color correction

http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Photoshop-Classic-Guide-Correction/dp/032144017X/

which goes into it all in insane depth.

I am still working on digesting it.

Very dense, good stuff.

I have no problem treating the sky from the ground, but I would try to understand the colors of the photo and experiment with each are separately.

I suggest adobe's classroom in a book, it's what I use in school. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321827333

I should doubly mention that I backup all images to the second portable drive, and that gives me a solid backup to courier back to HQ (via wife/relatives, etc).

The book I mentioned is this or an older version of it:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Real-World-Camera-Adobe-Photoshop/dp/0321580133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260864556&sr=1-1

Read it. Or forever be confused by Camera Raw.

If you're willing to shell out 10 bucks, Lynda.com has training/tutorial videos. Although I personally suggest that you buy this BOOK instead, you can look things up much faster. http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-Demand-Steve-Johnson/dp/0789744473

Not colorblind. However, I read this book many years ago when I started working for a photographer. I remember his analysis for color correction to be based heavily on numbers in the info pane. It was useful for myself, not knowing what correct color looked like even with normal color vision.

Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction by Dan Margulis

this series of HOW-TOs are great because they focus on 100 essential techniques for each program. why i like them so much is because you can go through them pretty quickly and they will give you a great base to work from. then will feel more comfortable tacking more complex techniques. in addition, mastering these first will give you the capability to begin designing things.

the adobe training books are great but they're really long and go into too much detail for someone just starting out. you want to get your feet wet first before you jump into these books lest they discourage you due to the apparent daunting size of how much there is to learn.

also, you can buy these books at the store, finish them in a week and return them for 100% refund. i'm just saying.

I've got a book that covers this kinda thing... It's called, "Scott Kelby's 7-Point System".

I can't provide a review myself as I haven't had time to go through it yet but I bet some other redditor can provide some insight.

I second the Scott Kelby recommendation. I have his Scott Kelby's 7-Point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3 and it does a great job at simplifying the process with easy to follow and clear steps.

You might have more success converting a copy to Lab mode.
An indispensable book that would really help is Professional Photoshop by Dan Margulis:
https://www.amazon.ca/Professional-Photoshop-Classic-Guide-Correction/dp/032144017X
See if you can find it at your local library before buying it.

So I've got $300 of Amazon credit (yay credit card rewards) and I have no clue what to buy.

I mostly shoot Micro 4/3 (Olympus OM-D E-M5) and I've got ~300GB of SD cards, 17mm, 45mm primes and a couple of zoom lenses I never use, a decent tripod, a polarizing filter and a ColorChecker Passport.

Usually I shoot when I'm out with my friends or with my girlfriend so mostly portraits and street photography but occasionally city/landscapes as well.

I haven't really done much with lighting so far but I'm thinking of learning so would it be a good idea to buy some lighting equipment? I've played with Photoshop and DxO 10 quite a bit so that's another idea and my home server is running a rather volatile set of hard drives so that's the last idea I had in mind.

I even had a look at switching to a Nikon D5200 for the extra 2 stops of dynamic range but decided it wasn't worth it since I don't find myself needing it that often.

Honestly I think I should have cashed in my credit card rewards for cash and taken some lessons instead but it's a bit late for that.

To sum up, these are the ideas I currently have:

• Hard drives for NAS
  
• Lighting equipment
  
• DxO Optics Pro
  
• Photoshop CC subscription
  
• Fisheye or wider angle lens (can anyone recommend a good landscape lens on M4/3?)
  
• Books? Online courses or other educational materials? (this has seemed interesting)
  
  If you were in my place what would you choose?

No, the LAB color space. This book is a good introduction to the powerful things you can do in LAB that you can't easily do in RGB or CMYK because luminosity is separate from color

I have a lot of books on color correction and out of all of them I rank this the highest: http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-LAB-Color-Adventures-Colorspace/dp/0321356780

It's a little long in the tooth now (2005) but the theory is still sound. However I just saw that the author of that book has a new(er) book out as well that I might pick up:
http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Workflow-Quartertone-Quandary-Enhancement/dp/0988280809

He's both technical and practical in his advice and more technically minded than a lot of the color correction books out there.

This guy really is spot on in his technique. I read his book on LAB colour about 5 years ago and it changed my workflow forever. Here's a link to amazon.

Photoshop LAB Color: The Canyon Conundrum and Other Adventures in the Most Powerful Colorspace

edit - formatted link properly

Buy this book.