Tim Grey’s Lightroom book fails to inform

Adobe’s wonderful new digital photo program, Lightroom, has a lot more bells and whistles than iPhoto or other typical low-end photo software. That’s exactly why I bought it. With a so-called prosumer camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XT, I’m able to do many more sophisticated things while shooting pictures and I needed a software program that could play along. Now I need some additional guidance about using Lightroom. With so many features and possible preference settings, what’s a poor prosumer to do? I need a meaty, authoritative yet accessible guide book. And preferably, I want something a little weightier than the glitzy, 77-page “manual” that came with the program and mostly features cool looking photos.

The only book in stock at my local book store was Tim Grey’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Workflow: The Digital Photographer’s Guide. Sadly, this 200-page, $40 tome is pretty much a waste of money. It’s nothing more than a basic manual that should have been included in the box for free. Grey goes through every single screen, preference setting, menu bar etc etc and simply describes each option in basic detail. There’s not enough in-depth advice, little connecting photography techniques to the program’s features and inadequate explanation of most options.

Take exporting photos, for example. This is a critical function in Lightroom since the program doesn’t actually alter any of your original photo files when you make edits or alterations. Instead, Lightroom saves a list of your change, like a recipe, in its database. Only when you export a photo does Lightroom actually commit your changes onto the pixels of your photo. Naturally, there are a lot of options including file type, resolution in pixels per inch, color space, maximum dimensions, compression versus quality and so on. I wanted some real guidance here but instead Grey gives you two and half pages of description and almost no advice or explanation. A typical line: “I suggest using JPEG for basic image review and TIFF when the images will need to be printed…” Great. Thanks, Tim.