Regardless of the steps you take to correct color cast or white balance, or to set white and black points the principles remain the same. Lee shows you how to handle both routine image correction and touch up as well as dealing with difficult image problems.

This book is not a basics of Digital Photography or Photoshop book. It assumes you have a modest level of understanding of both. Lee starts out with a basic chapter describing the tools and technology but quickly moves into setting up Photoshop and creating a custom camera calibration. (Side note: You can download the beta camera profiles and editor from Adobe).

The book then covers some basic lighting and lighting equipment for portraits with example lighting setups.

The real meat of the book and what Lee explains so well begins with the chapter “The Color of Skin”. I have yet to see an image that can’t benefit from some attention being paid to color correction. The chapters on tone and contrast and image retouching pull the entire workflow together.

The remainder of the book then goes into altering focus, special effects, and color manipulation to really make your images special. Finally one of the most useful sections of all, “Preparing for Print” getting that image off the screen and onto paper. I’m always looking for ways to streamline the output side of the workflow and getting my prints to look as good as what I see onscreen.

The companion CD has the files that Lee works on so that you can follow along if you want.

Great book, I should have bought it earlier. You can buy it right here.

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So what is proper exposure? That depends on you the photographer and what you are trying to achieve. There is no single answer but rather a series of choices you will make to create the image that you want. Simply, exposure is controlled by how much light is allowed to reach your cameras sensor and for how long that light is allowed to reach the sensor. The amount of light is controlled by the size of the aperture-opening of the lens expressed in f-stops. Confusingly the larger the f-stop the smaller the aperture or the less light allowed. An f16 lets in less light than f5.6. Think of it in terms of slicing up a pie. If you slice a pie into 16 equal pieces, each piece will be smaller than a piece of a pie sliced only 6 times. The aperture chosen will also affect the depth-of-field, or how much of the scene is in focus. Again, exposure is a combination of choices.

Published by Wiley as part of their Photo Workshop series of books “Exposure” deals with the subject in a clear easy to understand manner. Written by Jeff Wignall the book covers a full range of exposure challenges. Each chapter offers an assignment to practice the concept covered in the chapter. As with all the books in the series, Wiley maintains a website that encourages photographers to upload the chapter assignments for review and critique. I recommend not only this book but the other books in the Wiley Photo Workshop series as well. If you’re ready to improve your photo results regardless if you have a point-and-shoot or a full featured Digital SLR this is a great place to start.

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