Recommended books on CS5 and Printing

[MrIconoclast]

Hello,

I have been printing for the past few years with an HP Z3200 using CS3 and now CS5.

I like my prints, but often have some problems getting them to be as good as they should be.  In other words, my equipment is of higher quality than my printing skills. 

I am looking for a book that will help me better understand CS5 and the basics of printing.  I don't want an encyclopdia of technical knowledge, but I am able to deal with technology if it is explained in terms a layman (not an engioneer) can understand.

You recommendations for a good book would be appreciate.

Thanks.

[Mark D Segal]

Buy the Luminous-Landscape Camera to Print video downloaf available on this website. It has all you'll need - and more - for producing fine prints from A to Z.

[artobest]

I would also highly recommend Real World Image Sharpening by Fraser and Schewe. It sounds mighty abstruse but is actually a really good read and fantastically useful. And of course, you will need a decent book about colour management: Color Management for Photographers or Real World Color Management are the usual suspects there. Lastly, high-quality photography books help sharpen your appreciation of what constitutes a fine reproduction. The Printed Picture by Richard Benson is a terrific overview of virtually every photographic/ink-based reproduction technique to date, and is a real work of art in its own right.

[tived]

You will need books on printing, books on photoshop, books on color management, knowledge about your printer, ink and paper.

in other words you will need several books but most important of all you will need to experiment with your equipment and images.

However, I also found the Printing video here very useful, with a lot of insight, but these guys have a lot and i mean a lot of experience.

So, go buy some more ink and paper - actually buy many different types of paper.

Calibrate/profile your screen and if possible your printer too. Print some images with varities of scenes in it, Bill Atkins (there should be some links to some of his work here on LuLa) have one that is great IMHO, Print it and evaluate it.

You can either correct through profiling or you can make corrections in Photoshop, its part voodoo and part science ;-) but when it falls into place you know you have magic ;-) untill you change something and then its almost all over again!

I couldn't recommend just one book, many contributers here have really good books but none of them by themselves will give you all the answers (its a conspiricy ;-) ) but together they will give you many of them, but add to that the collective knowledge in this forum (LuLa) and you will have a good head start.

Experience, experiement and patience is the key ingredience with large bag of money! but its a lot of fun and can be so rewarding when it clicks ;-)

All the best

Henrik

PS: this is my personal opinion based on my experience

[Mark F]

A book that I have found very helpful is "From Camera to Computer" by George Barr. In the book Barr starts with un-manipulated images straight from the camera and then goes through the steps that he takes to arrive at the final version. Many times when I thought the image looked pretty good Barr then made a couple of more tweaks to make it even better. But you should know that this is not a PS "how to" book and it assumes you already have a basic knowledge of PS adjustments, layers and masks. It also is not a book on printing so you will need to look elsewhere for that.