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Charles Moore Reviews Mac Digital Photography
Sibex is publishing some pretty impressive books on digital photography lately. Last month I reviewed here Mikkel Aeland’s “Shooting Digital,” a superb volume oriented towards advanced amateur (actual or aspiring) to professional digital camera users. The subject of this review, “Mac Digital Photography” by Dennis R. Cohen and Erica Sadun is focused more towards the Mac-using amateur snapshot photographer who wants to take his or her photographic techniques to another level, and to learn the ropes of editing and enhancing digital shots using software like Apple’s iPhoto and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. 
Consequently, Mac digital photography devotes a lot more pages to explain what you can do with your digital photos on the computer then the Aeland book does, as well as including tutorial material on basic “Photography 101” essentials. Other differences between the two books are that Mac Digital Photography is a more conventionally-sized book, and includes a CD containing commercial demo and shareware image editing software and utilities. Dennis R. Cohen is coauthor of iLife Bible and Mac OS X Bible and has served as technical editor for a long list of Mac-related books. Erica Sadun is the author of eight Sybex books, including the award-winning iMovie 2 Solutions and the best-selling Digital Photography Essentials: Point, Shoot, Enhance, Share . She holds a master’s degree in digital imaging from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech’s Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center. Mac Digital Photography is liberally illustrated with photographs, diagrams, and screenshots, all rendered in black and white save for a 16 page insert of color photos in the center of the book. The fewer color renderings are likely one reason why this book comes with a list price of $5 less than “Shooting Digital,” notwithstanding the included CD. Chapter 1: “Composition, Lighting, and Posing: Some Tried-and-True Advice” is a good tutorial on basic photographic techniques. Much of the material in this chapter could fit in any general photography manual. Topics covered in include composition, lighting, setting up a portrait studio for less than $20, and the elements of posing subjects, understanding depth of field, and focusing tips. There are lots of photo illustrations in this chapter, although I have to say that the contrast and sharpness leaves much to be desired in many of them. Perhaps they lost something in the conversion from color to black-and-white, but someone ought to have spent a bit more time on this aspect. The photos in the rest of the chapters are much better. That niggle aside, the advice in the text is good, solid stuff for beginners. Chapter 2: “Digital Camera Equipment,” gets into the basics of digital photography hardware, including different types of memory and how to care for it and add it to your camera, the ins and outs of transferring photos to your computer, tips on using filters and lenses, types of batteries and how to maximize their life and run time, a discussion of what sort of digital camera to buy, deciding which image format to work with, plus cabling and wireless data transfer. The title of Chapter 3: “An Introduction to iPhoto and Photoshop Elements,” is self-explanatory. It’s basically a tutorial on editing and manipulating your digital photos using these two Mac software programs. If you have a iMac that shipped with OS X, you probably already have iPhoto to on your hard drive. If not, it’s a free download from Apple’s software support site. iPhoto is primarily a digital photo organization application, but it also includes a suite of basic image editing tools. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 is a much more powerful image editor than iPhoto, but has essentially no organizational tools, which makes the two programs somewhat complementary. Photoshop Elements is $99 commercial software, but a 30 day demo copy is included on the CD bundled with Mac Digital Photography. Topics covered in this chapter include quick tours of both programs, basic iPhoto editing techniques, Photoshop Elements selection tools and techniques, working with leaders in Photoshop Elements, and both basic and advanced editing techniques in Photoshop Elements. Chapter 4: “Digital Photo Editing,” carries on with the software use tutorial, showing us how to fix image flaws like poor contrast, low light, and the dreaded red-eye, how to get rid of unwanted background elements, and retouching to improve a subject’s complexion, compensating for fluorescent lighting effects, and using sharpening tools. Chapter 5: “New Viewpoints: Postprocessing Your Images,” gets into more advanced editing techniques, such as creating panoramas, 3D images, building your own stereo photo viewer, and making enlargements using Genuine Fractals Print Pro (also included on the CD in a demo version). Chapter 6: Digital Photo Printing,” is a tutorial on making prints from digital photographs. There is a discussion of the various types of computer printers available, different sorts of paper, plain paper vs. photographic paper, preparing digital photos for printing by a professional photo finisher, and understanding resolution and aspect ratio. Chapter 7: “Photos on CDs and DVDs,” explains various nuances of creating an interactive CD photo album using FlipAlbum 3 software (demo on the bundled CD), making photo presentations with Live SlideShow (demo on the bundled CD), creating a VCD slide show, using Toast Titanium 5 to create a slide show, and creating DVD-based slide shows using Apple’s iDVD software. Chapter 8: “Share Your Pictures,” explains how to distribute your pictures on the Internet via email, online photo albums, and using digital photo frames to send digital photos to people who don’t have Internet access. Also, covered are using your Mac’s video-out port for screen mirroring, creating streaming video, and adding watermarks. Chapter 9: “Digital Camera Versatility,” covers a variety of things you can do with a digital camera besides taking the usual snapshots, portraits, and landscapes, etc. Some examples include seeing things you can’t physically train your eyes on, making digital photo reminders, giving slide presentations, taking notes with your camera using optical character recognition (OCR) software, comparison shopping using a camera, illustrating your online auctions, creating records of events and recording images of accidents or damage for insurance claims, and playing games with your camera. Chapter 10: “Digital Camera Crafts,” explains how to use your digital camera as a tool to create photo fashions, laminations, greeting cards, photo labels, digital photos from old photographic prints, photo wheels, novel materials for photo projects, and coffee table books. Chapter 11: “Photo Transformation Projects,” tells us how to use digital photos in more new and different ways, such as novel photo manipulations, creating do-it-yourself coloring books, putting your own digital photos on a calendar, adding animation to your photos with the GIFFun (freeware on the bundled CD), and bringing still shots to life with iMovie’s Ken Burns effect. Chapter 12: “Just for the Fun of It: Digital Photo Projects,” carries on with and extends the theme of the previous chapter with tutorials on using special effects from PhotoIsland.com creating montages with iMontage (also on the PhotoIsland.com website), and creating collages with Photoshop Elements. There is also an Appendix containing a “Field Guide To On-line Photofinishing And Album Sites,” a detailed six page glossary of digital photographic terms, and a very fine Index with a primary discussions reference-highlighted in bold face - -a nice touch. I’ve already mentioned several of the items on the CD bundled with Mac Digital Photography, but to recap and complete the CD contents: Adobe Photoshop Elements 2, trial version (a 30 day demo) The design of the book is very well done, with enough white space on the pages for an airy impression, and the cover art and layout are a very attractive. 
I really like this book, it contains a ton of useful information and ideas for things to do with digital cameras that I never had thought of before. The tutorials on using iPhoto and Photoshop Elements are probably worth the price of admission alone. Speaking of which, while the book’s list price is $29.99, you can find it at Sybex Online or Amazon.com, for $20.99 -- 30% off list price -- not bad at all for a book with a bundled software CD. This book would make an excellent Christmas present for a Mac user on your list who has a digital camera, or to complement the gift of a digital camera itself. Mac Digital Photography For more information, visit:
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