The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques | 
 enlarge | Author: Joshua D. Bradley
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $39.99
Buy New: $21.37
You Save: $18.62 (47%)
New (31) Used (8) from $21.37
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 40080
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/Cdr
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.3 x 0.7
ISBN: 0470287632
Dewey Decimal Number: 006
EAN: 9780470287637
Publication Date: October 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Designed to save time in the digital workflow, Nik Software's entire suite of products (Dfine 2.0, Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Sharpener Pro 2.0) were conceived with the single goal of helping photographers use products such as Adobe Photoshop easier while offering numerous editing capabilities not found within Photoshop. These powerful and highly successful digital imaging products have been written about extensively in trade magazines and publication's, however, to date no one has taken on the task of compiling techniques into a book on how best to utilize these highly popular products. The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource of Professional Workflow Techniques is a product designed to resemble the way photographers think. The idea is to make sure the readers can apply techniques discussed in the book such as retouching, understanding the importance of light, and exposure, while learning all of the features and functionality of this family of products. The CD included with the book will have a trial version of Nik's most popular program, Color Efex Pro Standard Edition.The book will appeal to any and all owners of Nik Software products who have been asking for a book on this topic almost since the company's inception.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Leading By Example October 11, 2008
Jeffrey T. Lynch (Sugar Land, TX)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Leading By Example.
This is exactly what Josh Bradley does in his new book The Official Nik Software Image Enhancement Guide: The Photographer's Resource for Professional Workflow Techniques. Throughout the book you'll find beautiful and inspiring images shot by Josh and enhanced by Nik Software's five tremendous filters for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements; Dfine 2.0, Viveza, Sharpener Pro 2.0, Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Silver Efex Pro. Josh uses his vast experience in photography to not only teach us about Nik Software's products but also to inspire us to use these products to improve our own images.
Each chapter covers a different filter in detail with real-world examples demonstrating how to use the product to create stunning visual effects in our own work. Josh explains things in simple, down-to-earth language that will resonate with photographers worldwide, whether professional or amateur. It's like you're standing next to Josh and he's explaining it just as he would to a friend or colleague. It's this style of writing along with the incredible images included in the book that make it a winner for me.
Another great feature of this book is that it comes with a CD-ROM that includes trial versions of all Nik Software's products along with the images used in the book. For a photographer, there's nothing better than learning by doing and Josh's book makes it easy.
Nik filters fully explained October 19, 2008
Rosanne Cleveland-King (Richmond, KY)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
I just bought this book and have not fully read it yet, but what I've read is so very usable. I met the author (Josh Bradley) in the San Juan Islands at a Moose Peterson workshop. He gave us hints and tips that made the Nik filters even more usable. Filters can often make or break a photograph and Josh lead us to that end.
 Not very in-depth, poor sizing of images October 24, 2008
D. Kosiur
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
The author too frequently breezes through some of his applications of the Nik filters. In his attempt to cover all the filters and give examples of the use of many of them, he makes his discussion of the applications too brief.
Although he often explains what you're seeing in the accompanying images, the small size of the images makes it difficult to read some of the parameters he's set in the screenshots. There are times when he refers to what are supposed to be obvious parameter differences between screenshots, expecting you to read them from the screenshots, but the size and colors used make it impossible to do so. Both Josh and the publisher should have realized that the light gray-on-gray and white lettering-on-gray UI that Nik insists on using do not improve readability on the scales used in the book.
 Save your money November 6, 2008
Richard J. Cullen (Naperville, IL USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This book is truly awful. First of all, it is unreadable. Almost every illustration is a full screen screen-shot reproduced at 4 1/4" x 3 1/4", two on a page, with plenty of white space. The Nik screens use light gray text on a dark gray background, which is fine on the screen, because it doesn't corrupt your color vision, but it is totally unreadable when printed at such a small size in the book.
The text itself is bad. It is so full of typographical and grammatical errors that it is jarring to read. For instance, on page 106, what does "In steps the Reflector effects, and their ability to bring back an image." mean? Is there a verb in there that I missed? Is "reflector" a proper noun?
If the copy were redeeming, the book might be worth the struggle; but it isn't. I was hoping for a reference book that would help me figure out what the various filters do and how to use them. Instead, the book is a random walk through the filters that the author particularly likes, with a description of how he would apply them to specific images. Color Efex Pro contains 52 filters, with variations on many of the filters. The book covers fewer than 20 filters.
These comments apply only to Color Efex Pro, which is the only product that I own and the only part of the book that I slogged through. By the way, Color Efex Pro is a great program, even though it is not well documented. I bought this book to try to fill that void.
Sloppy and no more info than the online material October 23, 2008
M. Woods (CA, USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
Very disappointed with this. No real information and so many errors, I imagine it wasn't reviewed. Would have returned it had I not already removed the CD.
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