By Joe Dolittle
In this all-new book review shootout, we put two books to the test. Read on to learn how Digital Photo Projects For Dummies by Julie Adair King, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials by Mark Jenkinson stand up to our editorial review.
Digital Photo Projects For Dummies
Digital Photo Projects For Dummies presents a unique twist on understanding the basics of digital photography. This full-color book walks you through the most common projects and tasks you'll encounter in your digital photography activities. The book demonstrates the basics of setting your camera for the best shot before diving into how to improve your photos. Projects include brightening a dark photo, improving focus, getting rid of red-eye, touching up blemishes, creating a collage, adding a photo to a business card, rescuing old or damaged photos, and turning a photo into a piece of artwork ready for framing.
This book includes a DVD that contains "screencast" lessons created by the author that let you watch the specific steps of selected projects on your screen while you do them yourself. The DVD also includes trial versions of photo software as well as sample images from the book.
Connected Photographer's evaluation
Overall, this is a nicely complete edition of the classic Dummies book. Rather than explore an individual product, King looks at the sorts of things you might want to accomplish and takes you through the steps. While the book is more tasks than projects, it's still a worthwhile read, but it is a bit costly at $34.99 and the included DVD that boosts the price might not be worth the added expense. Still, a fine book and a worthwhile read.
Digital Photo Projects For Dummies by Julie Adair King, published by Wiley, is 288 pages and has a retail price of $34.99. We give Digital Photo Projects For Dummies a rating of 4 out of 5.
RATING: 4 STARSThe Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials
Presented in concise, intuitive style, this guide has much of what amateur photographers need to know to produce great images, whether shooting in digital or film (does anyone still do that?). Best of all, each chapter includes FAQs and full-color visual examples to turn good shots into great shots. Professional photographer Mark Jenkinson shares tips and tricks for:
- Understanding how the features and controls affect Photographs
- Making the best use of manual, aperture priority, and shutter priority settings
- Shooting moving objects
- Shooting in bright light or nighttime settings
- Adjusting depth of field
- Improving composition and lighting
- Choosing the best format for storing digital images
Connected Photographer's evaluation
We like shorter photography books and this book makes everything very clear to understand, without spending too much time on any individual technique. If you can take pictures, but want to create better-looking images, this book might be for you. You're not going to turn snapshots into masterpieces, as the book promises, but you might turn snapshots into something worthy for your wall.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials by Mark Jenkinson, published by Alpha, is 304 pages and has a retail price of $24.95. We give The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photography Essentials a rating of 4 out of 5.
RATING: 4 STARS