Digital Negative, The: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop

by Jeff Schewe

Shooting in the raw format gives digital photographers complete control over every aspect of image quality. The Digital Negative is devoted exclusively to the topic and shows you how to make the most of that control to extract the best-possible raw rendering of your digital negatives and to use Photoshop to achieve the highest quality in your images. In this update of his best-selling book, renowned photographer and author Jeff Schewe outlines a foolproof process for working with these digital negatives and presents his real-world expertise on optimizing raw images. You’ll learn hands-on techniques for exposing and shooting for raw image capture and developing a raw processing workflow, as well as Photoshop techniques for perfecting the master image, converting color to black and white, and processing for panoramic and HDR images. This second edition covers all the major updates and new features in Camera Raw, Lightroom, and Photoshop, such as GPU acceleration, Radial Filters, Pano Merge, and more.

Get the best tone and color from your digital negatives. Use Lightroom and Camera Raw sharpening controls to maximize image quality. Produce stunning black and white images. Learn how to remove people from photos in Photoshop using Smart Objects and Layer Blending. Use HDR in Camera Raw and Lightroom. And much more! Visit the book’s companion website at TheDigitalNegativeBook.com for sample images and more. 

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction

336 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Al Lock · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you do digital photography, this book is highly recommended. From start to finish, this book provides information on how to use the tools available to today's photographer to get the best images from your camera to the screen or paper. Although slightly dated, the basics are here. This is the modern day version of the Ansel Adam's trilogy.

[Jerome Lovell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schewe is the perfect teacher

The author, Jeff Schewe, knows how to simplify an idea without distorting it. He could teach this to a six year old. I’m like 7. Thank you Jeff.

[Robert Kosara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good info, bad writing. The book has some good information on how to use the various sliders in Lightroom, and some nice examples. I could have done without the name-dropping and the often forced humor, though. The author should have just stated his connection with the Lightroom developers in the beginning, instead of dropping hints until he couldn't help himself and talking about it, somewhere close to the middle of the book. An editor would have helped with this, too.

The parts that I liked were quite helpful. I found the explanation of the technical basics fairly confusing, and I have yet to find an explanation of the bit depth of RAW compared with the display that actually makes sense. Schewe hand-waves his way through this without providing much clarification. But the explanation of the meaning of the different sliders, and especially some of the examples, are really good and quite useful. I didn't care so much for the Photoshop and workflow parts, but I'm sure that could be useful to people who actually make a living with photography, and care more about efficiency than I do.

[Ellis Vener · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent introduction to getting the most out of your digital photgraphs. With an emphasis on shooting raw and processing in either Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or the Adobe Camera Raw plug in for Photoshop , Schewe walks readers through what a digital photograph is, how to shoot for an optimally exposed "capture" and then what to do with it to bring out it's latent properties without degrading image qaulity.

If you are looking for an all inclusive guide to raw processing and post-processing this book isn't it, but on the other hand unlike those other larger, heavier and far more more indepth "how to" books this is one that is actually readable.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is as close as I've gotten to having access to the geeky insiders who code Lightroom and Photoshop. Schewe does not work for Adobe but he is one of their longest term testers and has been responsible for some things being the way they are inLR or Photoshop. The book is an interesting mix of history of development from an insider's view, humor, heavy geeky engineering stuff and direct discussion of how to optimize a master digital negative. I enjoyed the book and learned a great deal. I'll be reading the sections on sharpening and noise reduction several times to get the whole value. My processing has already been altered due to this book...a good thing.

[Russ Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm on the fence between 3 and 4 stars. It gets 4 for accuracy, organization and clarity. Other aspects (tremendous ego, redundancy, incessant name dropping, etc.) bog down the writing in many places and draw me toward 3 stars. It's worth reading, but be prepared to skim in here and there. If you read both this book and his companion volume on print workflow and color management you probably only need to read one introduction. And finally, I'm inclined to agree with the author that it remains to be seen if this work will stand the test of time that its predecessor, The Negative (Adams) has.

[Ashley Boggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a photography class - nice reference!