The Shutterfly Guide to Great Digital Photos
reviewed by Dr Eric Flescher
Authors: Jeffrey Housenbold and David Johnson McGaw Hill-Osborne 2100 Powell Street, 10th Floor Emeryville, CA 94608 Booksite: http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/getbook.php?isbn=0072261668&template= Released: April 27, 2005 Pages: 256 $20 USD, $27 CND, £12 GBP, 17€ EUR ISBN: 0072261668 Strengths: Photos, how to tips, good screenshots are included in the chapters. Includes several nice projects for using digital photos in many ways (jigsaw puzzle, calendar etc). Each chapter begins with a series of learning steps that are highlighted through the chapter (however these are not listed per page to go to these easily and directly). Weaknesses: Black and white printed pages (except in chapter 6). No highlights related to using Macintosh (as in page 101) when managing photos. iPhoto is not even mentioned. Does not include information about RAW images. If you are looking for more Macintosh related information, this book is not for you. If you are looking for iPhoto information, it is not mentioned at all. |
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The authors used their collective knowledge to detail information about the use of digital photos. Jeffrey Housebold is the Presidents and CEO of Shutterfly, Inc. while Dave Johnson is an award winning photographer and a best-seller author of several books related to digital cameras. The main idea of the ten chapters in the book is to help you become a better photographer and have a better appreciation and pleasure, using your digital photos. Each chapter has nice set of introductory details concerning what you will find in the chapter.
In Chapter 1, “Welcome to the Future”, deals with shopping for and using a digital camera, choosing and accessories, conserving battery power.
“Composition Essentials”, Chapter 2, focuses upon learning about the rules of composition, taking better snapshots, and taking interesting photos. This chapter also some important points regarding understanding the relationship of aperture, shutter, depth of field (including using to emphasize subjects you are shooting) and applying rules of composition.
Chapter 3, “ Exposure Essentials”, include setting ISO settings, ways to adjust exposure, employing depth of field and more.
Chapter 4,” Sports, Actions and Active Kids”, emphasizes catching fast-moving subjects, stopping action, and suggestions for “freezing” photos, waterfalls and wildlife.
Chapter 5, “Viewing and Organizing Your Pictures” includes viewing, erasing, Using the memory card, organizing your photos in Windows (only) m archiving your photos on CD-ROM. “Quick Changes for Your Images,” Chapter 6, has information concerning learning how to open and edit images saving in different formats. More contains fixing crooked images, convert color to black and white, changing brightness and correcting the color balance. On page 113, PC-only is included and not Macintosh. There are some colorized product results in this chapter.
Chapter 7,” Cleaning Up Your Images”, helps working with the images to make the pictures better. Sharpen blurry images and enhance sharpness, using the painting took removing red eye, using airbrush to eliminate parts of the photos, creating panorama.
Chapter 8, “ Sharing Your Pictures,” involves sharing images and sending and receiving via email, choosing the right file format, compressing images. Showing off pictures on a handheld PC, display images on a digital picture frame.
Chapter 9, “Printing Your Pictures”, ordering pictures from Shutterfly, deciding about resolution and size. Shopping for a printer, choosing right kind of paper, determining size of paper to print upon and caring for your prints.
Chapter 10, “Projects for Parents and Kids”, this chapter is for using images to create a whole variety of projects for home, school, family and more. There are some unique applications (as in putting your kids in a jar, shake hands with Elvis, Stage a mystery photo contest, using digital images as wallpaper) and other appealing applications (making newsletters, photo journals, calendars and more).
This book has fairly good ideas for learning how to use digital photos. Its review of learning how to create better pictures is adequate but not extensive, possibly because the main focus is how to use Shutterfly, (after all one of the authors is the CEO of the company), one of several online-digital application for sending, storing and processing pictures and more. For many, using Shutterfly’s tools and applications may be enough to create what you want with your photos and possibly even more.
If you are looking for basic applications and information about digital camera and photos and delivering these photos through Shutterfly or at home, this book might be for you. The book is for those who are novice to the digital world and want to learn how to start (especially working with PC). In addition, this is especially evident for PC users, but Macintosh users may have to look elsewhere. If you are looking for good information, but not a lot of other insight and more, this may be a good book to start. However, if you are not using Shutterfly, using MacIntosh, you might want to look further for a book which is more in-depth, has more details in terms of using photos and more.
