July 29, 2008
Martin Evening’s Lightroom 2 book
Photo: Jeff Schewe
This post comes from Chicago where I am working with Jeff Schewe on a joint Focal Press book project to do with Photoshop. Meanwhile, print copies of the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book were delivered to the studio last week, so now that Lightroom 2 has been officially announced, I can reveal that the Lightroom 2 book print run is complete and shipped to the main warehouse, ready for distribution.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 book contains 624 pages and has been fully updated for all the major changes since version 1.0. I’ll be publishing some extracts from the book here on Lightroom-news over the next few weeks and you’ll also be able to read some extra article extracts over on Peachpit.com. You can also read some of the back story to the cover photo shoot as well as a video podcast that George Jardine made earlier this year.
Now available for order at:
Peachpit.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.uk
ISBN: 0-321-55561-9
List Price: $49.99 (US)
I’m really please that you’ve managed to have the book available so quickly. I have a copy of the previous version and I’ll probably get this one too.
Can you confirm that you were able to include comprehensive coverage of all of the features that were not in the beta?
Cheers,
Keith
I pretty much had to revise everything that was in the book and use fresh image examples to revise the techniques with (which was one reason for self-commissioning a shoot just for the book). Nearly everything that was in the 1.1 update has been updated here plus there are new tips that are not LR 2 specific. And yes, there is comprehensive coverage of all the changes since the LR 2 beta, where I had to re screen shot everything to show the new UI.
Martin
Martin, I just checked on amazon and it is still showing as a pre-order with a Jan. 9 2009 release date. Any idea of when they will have it available, and I assume you will not have a pdf version like you did for the v1?
great news. I will order it as soon as it’s available at amazon.de in Germany.
Martin, Amazon US says the release date is January 10, 2009. You say “print run is complete and shipped to the main warehouse, ready for distribution”. When will the book be available?
Thanks.
Michael
Prior to the official announcement of Lightroom 2, no specific date could be given as to when the book would be available, because to do so would have given away the actual date Lightroom 2 shipped. So you’ll note that the shipping date for my book (and also for Scott Kelby’s Lightroom 2 book) is given as 10th January 2009. This was purely an arbitrary date. Now that Lightroom 2 is official, the distribution date can be updated for those books that are ready to go. However, with Amazon it usually takes quite a while before they get around to updating anything. I am pretty sure that both my book and Scott’s are the first Lightroom 2 books you can place orders for and expect to have shipped as soon as possible.
Thank you Martin. I just placed my order. I also thank you for your Lightroom 1 and Photoshop Books. You are an outstanding educator, and a great photographer.
Michael
Very nice book Martin! Thanks a lot!!
Martin – my major complaint about the original book was that the illustrations were so small, that I needed a magnifying lens to read them. In truth, I gave up reading after 20 pages and sold the book.
Is the new edition easier to read?
For the book layout I wanted the page margins to be as narrow as the publisher would allow in order to let the screen shots be reproduced as big as possible across the page. I felt it was important for readers to see the panels in context, as they appeared in the program UI. Admittedly this was not big enough to allow all the full screen shots to be completely legible, but they were enlarged as much as they could possibly be for the size of the book.
As in the previous book, there are figure diagrams where enlarged panels fill the margin. However, in addition to this I have now placed enlarged panel views that float over many of the window UI screen shots. This isn’t seen in every UI screen shot, but I do this whenever it is important for the reader to see the settings used. I would say that in most cases the enlarged panel views allow you to read the panel contents at a font size 50% bigger than before and just slightly smaller than the font size used for the captions.
Martin
Sounds good Martin. I shall be placing my order soon. I’m not sure I’ve been won over by the help system that comes with the program. What happened to the nice user-friendly help pages?
All useful hints etc gratefully recieved!
Joanne
Martin,
I pre-ordered this as soon as it was possible. Amazon screwed up though so I won’t get it till next week, but very much looking forward to it!
One problem though. I will soon leave for a 4 months trip around South America. Despite a need to save weight I will bring a laptop and expect that much of my spare time will go into organizing and editing images. It would be fantastic to have your book with me so I can learn on the way. But it’s just too heavy to carry around for months… Is it possible to get a digital version, similar to the ammendment to the v1 book?
There is an ebook version of the book that you can purchase from Peachpit.
http://www.peachpit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321591429
This is an encrypted PDF version of the physical book.
Traveler,
I enquired with the publisher about this and they pointed out that there is an ad in the book that tells you how to get on-line access to the book. So the answer is yes, you can get to read it on-line as without having to purchase the ebook version.
Martin
Hi Martin,
The first book was invaluable (as are your Photoshop series) So really looking forward to this one. My question is a little off topic but I’m hoping you can help. George’s fab little LED light bank that helped you with that bit of fill light for the cover shoot – Where would I get one, who makes them? I’ve searched online without joy so here’s hoping you can help.
Kind regards
Cormac
http://www.monomondo.com
Hi Cormac,
The light George let me use was called a ‘Light Panel’ and I know you can order these via Gomediamonkey.com. These are not particularly bright for stills work as they are mainly designed for video. In this case however, the light panel at full power provided just the right amount of fill for the cover image shot.
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thanks a million for the info. It could be just the ticket for the odd time that hauling another head into place is overkill. I’ll check it out.
Kind regards
Cormac
I purchased this book last week and it is amazing. Every single page of this was so well written.
Nice job.
Tom