John Shaw’s “Photoshop Field Guide” has been my bible for years.  So, when “John Shaw’s Digital Processing: A Personal Workflow Using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4″ was released I purchased it right away at a reasonable cost of $25.  What follows are a few of my thoughts on what, at the time, was John’s latest e-book.  Note: he has since released “Using Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5″ ($15).  Both e-books may be purchased on his website, which earns you a PDF of whatever book you’ve chosen.

John clearly states on his website that neither of these titles are intended to be “how-to” books.  Rather, they are a rare glimpse inside the processing habits of a seasoned pro.  In fact, the highlight of the book for me were the examples where John discusses not only the step-by-step workflow used on each image, but his reasons for making each adjustment.  Truly invaluable material.

I’ve been using Lightroom since version 1 was released in 2007 (or maybe early 2008).  I’ve read and own a couple ”how-to” books, the best of which is Nat Coalson’s “Lightroom 3: Streamlining Your Digital Photography Process“.  It’s safe to say I’m no spring chicken when it comes to using Lightroom and Photoshop.  I mention this because I believe someone newer to working in the digital darkroom will find John’s e-book much more useful than I.

Having said that, here’s what I really like about John’s e-book:

• As usual, John doesn’t use technical jargon or geek speak.  His instruction is easy to understand and flows nicely.
• I’m glad he spent a few pages discussing the importance of devising a system for organizing your digital files early in your career.
• The short chapter on “Getting Started” touches on just about all of the most important aspects of configuring Lightroom for optimal performance.
• His thoughts on the initial edit of images after downloading them to your computer were helpful.
• Shortcuts!  Using shortcuts in Lightroom can dramatically increase the speed with which you are able to process images and John details the most used ones, even providing a handy cheat sheet.

What didn’t I like?  Really, it isn’t so much that I didn’t like certain things.  I just found that for me, as a fairly experienced user, some of the content was too basic.  By no means does that make this a bad investment.  If you are newer to using Lightroom and Photoshop, this may well be the best place to start.  If you’re an experienced user, you’ll benefit from the examples and possibly from one or two of the Photoshop tutorials on such topics as image blending or luminosity masking. 

The bottom line is this: you can’t write a fairly generic book and have it appeal to newbies and power users at the same time.  ”Digital Processing: A Personal Workflow Using Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS4″ succeeds in keeping both sides happy about as well as can be expected.  Would I spend $25 on the book, if I had known then what I know now?  Yep.  Those examples I mentioned earlier are worth the price of admission alone.  Consider the rest of the content a nice bonus.

I haven’t yet purchased “Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5″ although I do plan to pick it up.  I’ll do a separate review on it at some point in the future.  If you’ve got either one, please take a moment to leave a comment with your thoughts and opinions on them.