Digital Home Thoughts: The Only Photoshop Book You'll Ever Need

Sharpen Your Sharpening Skills
No Photoshop book would be complete without a discussion on image sharpening. Sadly, until The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers I’ve never come across one that actually helps me make sharper images. Most books show you the unsharp mask dialog, explain the different settings, but then fail to offer specific values that work for different kind of images.

Chapter 10 is Kelby’s attempt at de-mystifying the world of image sharpening, and I would spend $27.99 on this book just for pages 292-304. He provides sharpening settings for four different kinds of images, and an advanced Lab colour sharpening technique that I now use on all my images. Just last weekend I was trying to figure out how to get the best sharpening for some tulip photos I’d taken, and Kelby’s settings for soft images turned a great photograph into a stunning one.


Figure 6: Before sharpening.


Figure 7: After sharpening.

Conclusions
The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers is a must-have for anyone who owns a copy of Photoshop. It is as much a digital editing tool for me as Photoshop itself, and my images are vastly better now that I have a copy on my shelf. The only drawbacks are minor: Kelby’s chapter introductions try overly hard to be funny and can be distracting, and the index could use quite a bit more detail. Other than that, this is without a doubt the best Photoshop book I’ve ever read. Highly recommended!