Summary: This book was very disappointing. Borrow it from a library, or read it in a bookshop, but it is not worth buying.
The reviewer, David Gibson, is the founder and former editor of the specialist photographic magazine Underground Photographer (ISSN 1362 0614)
The advertising for this book said "This book, which will become the standard work, is a clearly written, jargon-free, hands-on guide to all aspects of digital photography". Well, for the reader who knows absolutely nothing about the subject the book probably does have some merit but, even so, it is unlikely to be a lasting reference book. Firstly, it describes a 'snapshot' in time – and the market is changing so rapidly that any book that mentions specific printers, scanners, camera and software packages is not going to last long. The second failing is the numerous inaccuracies and technical errors, which make it all but useless as a reference work.
Naively, I initially assumed that the book would be written by a photographer, but I soon realised my mistake. Neither is it written by someone familiar with the technical concepts of photography and computer software. It is, in fact, written by a journalist who seems to have persuaded a few suppliers to loan him software and equipment and then spent six months trying to learn how to use it. This approach is fine for an equipment review, or for ephemeral 'features' articles in a newspaper or the pages of Computer Shopper, but it is hardly a sound basis for "a standard work".
The book starts out fine, describing the concepts of digital images, scanning, storage, editing and output in a basic manner, but as soon as he tries to go into any detail the author starts to run into trouble. For example, he states that TIFF files use LZW compression, contain a preview image and have to be converted to another format for printing. The first two of those statements simply describe options for TIFF formats and the third statement is … well, I do not really know what to make of it – I have never had a problem printing TIFF files myself. I can only assume that he has limited his 'research' to one or two software packages that offered him limited options to manipulate such files.
The book comes with a large glossary of terms, some of which the author struggles to explain. He did not quite say "A telephone conversation takes place on two wires, one for each participant" which I once read in a book, but he does say "an ordinary telephone line carrying analogue sound data has a bandwidth of 9600bps, which is expanded to 28,800bps, or higher by attaching a modem which compresses and decompresses data." Now you might think Im being condescending to pick on technical mis-definitions like the above, but it is one of many, and what comes across is a guy who does not really understand the subject. Nevertheless, he has done what all good journalists do, and asked around – and it's not his fault that someone told him wrongly what CCD stands for!
Two further checks confirmed this lack of subject depth – I checked 'gamma' and 'unsharp mask' in the index. These were both subjects that I wanted some technical information on. Sadly both were wrongly explained and both received minimal attention in the book. According to the book, the term 'gamma' "defines how the digital data held in a file is displayed on a monitor". Now, some image-manipulation software does allows you to adjust the gamma of your screen display; but the author was clearly unaware that gamma is actually a well-established photographic term describing the contrast range of an image. Some explanation of its relation to brightness, contrast and the image histogram would have been useful.
The 'unsharp mask' option in photo-editing software is a subtle device, and comes into its own when outputting images to a half-tone printing process. Not many people understand how to use this mask (which is, of course, why I wanted to know more). So, predictably, the author devotes less than half a page to the subject, and does not distinguish between this filter and a 'sharpen' filter, which is not the same thing.
I also wanted to find out something about scanners but, although it mentions 36-bit devices in passing, the book does not answer the questions I had about if and how the colour-depth is converted to 24-bit. Neither could I understand from the, by now, familiarly 'woolly' explanations, how the 'D' value of a scanner relates to contrast and colour depth.
The book's brief historical perspective was interesting. The section on 'digital inspiration' also included a brief history of the art, although it limited the discussion to the digital manipulation of images, forgetting that the merging of art and photography goes back to the first days of photography. I cannot fault the brief section on 'shooting tips' except to ask why they have to be 'hot' tips!
The author describes the operation of a wide range of printing devices but, although he gives brief information about colour rendition and resolution, the information is not very well presented, and is not easily digestible. The book is aimed at beginners, of course, but manipulating and outputting images is important, and the author manages to say surprisingly little of use. The leaflet I received with a recent Kodak Photo-CD gave me more useful hints than this book; and the magazine Underground Photographer, which I used to edit, has seen excellent discussion of the manipulation of printing 'dots'.
On the subject of 'dots' the author does not seem to understand the relationship between printer dots and pixels; and his attempts at explaining error diffusion and dithering suffer accordingly. Because of this clear lack of understanding on his part, I was unable to trust much of his explanation of different printer technologies and so, when I need to know about dye-sublimation or thermo-autochrome printers I will have to go elsewhere.
The author even manages to garble a discussion of copyright protection, describing it as "giving the creator … the right to copy, distribute, sell and/or create derivatives of the original". I have never heard such a bizarre 'spin' on the subject! He mentions the new concept of 'Moral Rights' –but not by name – and, once again, grossly oversimplifies it to the point of incorrectness. Again, we have seen a more sensible and learned discussion of copyright in the pages of Underground Photographer.
The book finishes off with a series of appendices giving useful addresses of organisations and image-processing bureaux split into UK regions. However, he manages to exclude two of the largest bureaux in Leeds, which I regularly use. The list of equipment specifications and prices is going to be of limited use as well.
Even the presentation managed to irritate me. For a book that is 'electronically' produced there is little excuse for the spelling mistakes I spotted. The grammar was sadly lacking in places too. The layout could have been better, especially where it (fairly pointlessly, I thought) lists the instructions to use with various software packages. The quality of some of the photos was mediocre; many consisting of computer screen shots that all looked fairly similar to me. In particular he could have given a much better example of the loss of edge information caused by heavy JPG compression. However, the comparison of colour inkjet printing on different types of paper came across quite well.
A good introductory book on digital photography would be very useful, and the right author could produce a work that did become a standard text. I am told that such books do exist, so I'll have to search them out. This particular book was very disappointing. Borrow it from a library, or read it in a bookshop, but it is not worth buying.
Approx 1300 words
Copyright David Gibson, November 98, copyright information