Piet Van den Eyde is a well known European Lightroom author. I’ve been in touch on a number of occasions with him via LRB Portfolio and general Lightroom interaction, so I have to say I was delighted to see him crop up as a new author for Craft and Vision. To me they have become the epitome of excellence in photographic ebooks, with both quality content and design.
Piet’s book is called the ‘The Power of Black and White: In Adobe Lightroom and Beyond’. The book covers a range of material from things to do in camera, to using the colour wheel, the tools to convert in Lightroom and more. Peit covers a Black and White workflow and takes us into 3 case studies that show the power of Lightroom for Black and White conversion. For 1 image, he starts with a far from perfect capture and turns it into a wonderfully toned image, showing us how to dodge and burn to help fix issues in the image. For another, he shows where Photoshop is needed to achieve the final result.
Chapter 5 deals with Presets and the pros and cons of using them. The next section of the book deals with the Grad filter and Adjustment brush and how to get the best out of it. As part of the ‘& Beyond’ of the title, Piet covers Alien Skin Exposure (which I reviewed a while ago) and NIK silver EFEX 2. Continuing in this vein, he also discusses the merits of HDR with NIK HDR EFEX PRO, LR/Enfuse and Photomatix Pro. He’s nothing but straightforward in dealing with each.
This takes us onto the ‘Finishing Touches’ section where Toning and Borders are introduced, along with a look at hand tinting. Finally Peit takes us through Printing, where the importance of Monitor Calibration is discussed, along with the Print Job panel in Lightroom.
As you can see from the overview, this is quite a comprehensive book. Piet writes with a very natural style, and the book is easy to follow. Would I recommend this? Heartily. For the $5 this book costs ($4 with the code BWLIGHT4 until Midnight tonight PDT), it’s a no brainer. While it shows as a 100 page book, it’s more like 100 double page spreads. It’s probably the most comprehensive Craft and Vision book so far, and an absolute bargain even at full price.
For more go to Craft and Vision.
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