Book review: Take Your Best Shot by Tim Grey

Photoshop expert Tim Grey has recently published his new book Take Your Best Shot: Tim Grey Tackles Your Digital Darkroom Questions.
The book is a little more than 200 pages of questions and answers about digital photography with an emphasis on digital darkroom techniques.

The book contains 10 chapters. Below is a basic outline of the book with some examples of the topics each chapter covers. This is not a detailed list of everything you will find in the book.

1. Digital Fundamentals
Here, Tim talks about topics like resolutions, dynamic range, RAW format or how a sensor works.
It’s a nice introduction with answers to questions many beginning photographers have.

2. Digital Cameras and Tools
In this chapter the author covers the advantages of a DSLR over a Point&Shoot camera, sensor dust, how many megapixels you need or how to take care of your camera.

3. Digital Capture
Topics in this chapter are JPEG vs RAW, how to expose for the highlights, color spaces and more. Tiim also covers some trends in digital photography that may play a major role in the future like light-field cameras.

4. Digital Darkroom
This chapter covers the basics of digital darkroom techniques including storage and backup, what you need for your digital darkroom and so on. He also address the question of Mac vs. Windows. Of course, he does not take one side and trashes the other. Tim recognizes that both systems have their advantages and disadvantages and you won’t feel the need to change your computer system after reading this chapter.
I liked that the author recommends external hard drives as the best solution for image backups. With the current prices, they are really the best solution.

5. Color Management
Color Management is a complicated topic for the beginner and even for many past this stage. This chapter covers the basics of color management including how to calibrate your monitor and how color management in Photoshop works. I found the explanations in this chapter very good and if you are new to this topic, many things will be easier to understand after reading it.

6. Optimizing in Photoshop
Here Tim writes about working with RAW files and when he uses Adobe Camera RAW and when he switches to Photoshop. He describes his personal workflow and yours may differ. Tim’s approach is to do only some stuff in Adobe Camera RAW (or Lightroom) and most in Photoshop. I prefer to do much more in Lightroom and use Photoshop only when it offers better tools than Lightroom. The author never tells you that his way is the only way to do it but merely describes his workflow and why he does it that way, but he never tries to convince the reader that this is the only way of doing things.
Other topics in this chapter cover the Curves tool in Photoshop or how to work with colors in your image.

7. Creative Effects
This chapter covers some interesting creative effects like Photoshop Filters, adding vignettes or how to create Black-and-White images.

8. Image Problem Solving
Not every shot is perfect in camera. Many need some corrections after the photo shoot on the computer. That’s the topic of this chapter. The author explains how to fix sky that is too pale, changing the white balance in JPEG images, how to apply noise reduction and more.

9. Printing
Here, Tim covers buying a good printer, how to fix some common printing problems and how to prepare an image for upload to a printing service.

10. Digital Sharing
The last chapter covers how to share your images on the web, how to create web galleries or slide shows or what to look for when buying a digital projector.

My final rating:
Overall I found the book very interesting and a good read. The writing style is easy and never boring. The author really knows his topics and also knows how to explain difficult subjects like color management to the reader.
I would have liked to see a little more coverage of RAW processing. A little more about Layers would also have been good, as this is a very confusing topic for Photoshop beginners.

Keep in mind that this is not a complete Photoshop book. This was not the intention of the author. You will still need an introduction to Photoshop beside this book.

If you are already an experienced digital photographer and Photoshop user, you won’t get much out of this book and I don’t recommend buying it.
If you are a beginner or an intermediate user and still have many unanswered questions in your head, then Tim’s book might be a good addition to your library.

Buy from amazon:

Also see my other photography book reviews.