Also would like to mention that they are available at "Lighting Mods Amazon Official Store".
"Photographic Light Simplified" by Susan McCartney (Allworth Press)
ISBN: 1-58115-256-6
As a basic book I think this one is one of my favorites.
The name says it all "Photographic Light Simplified" and that's what it is. You get to know everything about lighting... from seeing the light to using gear and applying techniques.
Starting with equipment as basic as garage light and tripod you will learn how to build your studio piece by piece in a simple way.
It also includes several self-assignments and a collection of creative approaches to shooting popular photographic subjects.
What you will find inside:
* Lighting Overviews
- A first Photo Setup
- If You Are Beginning Light With a Digital Camera
- The Three Basic Types of Photo Lights
- A One-Light Lighting Kit
- Setting Up Your First Light Or Lights
- Upgrading from Rock-Bottom-Budget Lights
* Lighting Aesthetics
- Achieving the Right Mood
- Lighting and Contrast
- Lighting and Color Balance
* All About Hotlights
- An Introduction to Photoflood and Quartz Lights
- How Photoflood Lights Work
- How Quartz Lights Work
- Working with Two Hotlights
* Exposure and Metering
- Exposure Fundamentals
- Reflected-Light Meters
- Exposure Latitude
- How I expose Under Hotlights
- Incident-Light Meters
* Battery-Powered Flash
- Overview
- Flash Accessories
- Detachable TTL Dedicated Flashes
- Manual Flashes
- Using Flash as Studio Lighting
* Lighting with Strobes
- An Introduction to Strobes
- My Own Strobes Preferences
- Lighting Modifiers and Other Strobe Accessories
* Nine Self Assignments
* Approaches to Popular Subjects
* Wrap-Up
- Showing Your Work
- Marketing Photographs
This is a great startup book about this subject, no diagrams but lot's of practical examples.
"Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers" by Christopher Grey (Amherst Media)
ISBN: 1-58428-125-1
A must Portrait book. Ever wanted to know how to pose a model, to make that butterfly light or how to position a light to get a particular effect? well your prayers have finally arrived.
On this one you get to know all kind of lights by their names and also get the diagrams so you can use it as a reference for your own portraits.
What's inside:
Introduction
- The Importance of Portrait
- Style
- Markets for Portraiture
- Before We Begin
Part I - The Principles of Portrait Lighting
1. Nature of Light
* The Physics of Light
- Electromagnetic Spectrum
- Angle of Incidence
* The Properties of Light
- Color Temperature
- Direction
- Quality
- Contrast
2. Professional Lighting Equipment
* Light Positions and Functions
- Key Light
- Fill Light
- Kicker Lights
- Background Lights
* Light Types
- Strobes
- A Word of Caution
* Light Modifiers
- Dishes
- Umbrellas
- Soft Boxes
- Other Modifiers
- More Jargon
3. Light Ratios
* The Key-t-Shadow Ratio
* The Highlight-to-Key Ratio
* The Highlight-to-Key-to-Shadow Ratio
4. Basic Lighting
* Planning and Progress
* Broad Light
- Two Lights and Fill
* Short Light
- Building a Portrait with Short Light
5. Classic Lighting Styles
* Loop Light
* Close Loop Light
* Rembrandt Lighting
- One-Light Rembrandt Lighting
- Second Rembrandt Build
* Side Light
- Building a Side-Light Portrait
- A Second Side-Light Build
* Butterfly / Dietrich / Paramount Light
- Building a Butterfly-Light Portrait
Part II - Portrait Lighting in Practice
* A Versatile Portrait Lighting Setup
- A Single Subject
- With Two Subjects
* Basic Lighting for Business Portraiture
* Finding Boundaries
* A Hair Light for Every Occasion
* Closing the Pupil
* Backgrounds
* Headshots
* Headshots with Minimal Depth of Field
- Reducing the Depth of Field
- Adding Drama
* Headshots for Publicity
* Applying Makeup
* Editorial Portraiture
* High-Key Lighting
* Low-Key Lighting
* One Light Glamour
* Portraits with Flare
* Working with the Profile
* Location Photography
* The Beauty of Overexposure
* Bridal Portraits
* Fashion Light
* The Film-Light Connection
* Gentle Light
* Get in Tight
* The "Hollywood" Portrait
* The Intimate Portrait
* Light on Light
* North Light
* Simulating Natural Sunlight
* Working with Candles
* Underlighting for Glamour
This is a very simple but complete Portrait lighting book where you can find all kids of lighting styles.
"Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography" by Michael Grecco (AMPHOTO Books)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8174-4227-9
ISBN-10: 0-8174-4227-8
ISBN-13: 978-0-8174-4223-1
ISBN-10: 0-8174-4223-5
This is the kind of book that shows you how professionals do their jobs.
Clean with some diagrams for some shootings and lot's, I mean LOT'S, of great shooting information from behind the scenes.
You will also find so many photos of famous people and artists. A great add to your book collection in case you wanna try something different.
What you will find inside:
1. Cameras
- Formats and Lenses
- Shutter + Apperture = Control
- Selective Focus
- Plastic Cameras
2. Illumination
- Grecco's Laws of Light
- Grid Spots
- Fresnel and Optic Spot Lights
- Shadows
- Strobes
- Continuous Light
- Lighting It!
- Finding Light
3. The Medium
- From Analog to Digital
- Your Color Palette
- Getting the True Color You Want
4. Creativity & Conceptualization
- Collaboration
- Storytelling
- Locations
- Studios & Sets
- Props
- Wardrobe
- Makeup & Hair
- Letting Go
- Taking Risks
5. The Connections
- The Subject/Photographer Relationship
- Posing
- Shooting Egos
- Shooting Strangers
6. Case Studies
- Irony & Humor
- Celebrities
- Music
- Business & Corporate
- Nudes
- Advertising
- Sports
- Drama
This a very complete book written by someone who knows too well the business.
"Skin" by Lee Varis (Sybex)
ISBN-13: 978-0-470-04733-0
ISBN-10: 0-470-04733-X
And because not all of the good things come as photography books I just left the last 3 for Photoshop aficionados.
Starting with one I consider very good in explaining the skin tones and their corrections as well as some of the most typical effect eliminations like wrinkles, spots, shapes and tattoos.
It also would help you mastering the Rembrandt lighting and other basic techniques with great examples and setups.
Trimming the Fat, Lighten up the eyes and filling up wrinkles as well as adding soft focus, retouching and other advance Photoshop techniques.
You got them all cover here in this great and powerful book, also includes a CD with all the reference materials to enhance and reinforce your learning.
And as if all this wasn't enough you still get a Color manage for printing chapter that is very interesting.
What's inside:
Chapter 1 - Digital Imaging Basics
- Setting Up: Hardware
- Setting Up: Software
Chapter 2 - Color Management, Workflow and Calibration
- Basic Digital Capture Overview
- Calibrating for Digital Capture
- Putting Color Management in Context
Chapter 3 - Lighting and Photographing People
- Lighting Technology
- Basic Portrait Lighting
- Advance Lighting Techniques
- Experimenting with Light
Chapter 4 - The Color of Skin
- White Points, Black Points and Places In-Between
- Zone System: Contrast and Tone
- Neutral Color: Using Balanced Numbers
- White/Black Point Correction
- The Family of Man: Cultural and Psychological Issues
Chapter 5 - Tone and Contrast: Color and B+W
- Converting to B+W
- Split Channels: Layer Blending
- Luminosity Blending
- Hue/Saturation Toning Effects
- The Power of B+W
Chapter 6 - Retouching
- Basic Image Repair
- Hue/Saturation Color Repair
- Beauty Retouching
- Figure Thinning Techniques
- Subtle Retouching
Chapter 7 - Special Effects
- Soft Focus
- Film Grain and Mezzotint
- Cross-Processing
- Tattoos
Chapter 8 - Preparing for Printing
- Sharpening
- Color Management for Printing
- Soft Proofing
- Desktop Printing
- Creative Printing Finishing
Chapter 9 - Parting Shots
- Digital Photo Workflow
- Companion CD Contents
- Future Developments
Just get your Photoshop skills sharpen with this book.
"The Creative Digital Darkroom" by Katrin Eismann & Seán Duggan (O'Reilly)
ISBN-13: 978-0-596-10047-6
ISBN-10: 0-596-10047-7
The other selection I've made from all the great books out there was this one.
Simply because it combines in one place all you need to know how to master the traditional darkroom concepts and skills but this time translated into Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Lightroom.
If You love Black and White photography you can count on comprehensive chapters about it and also color darkroom techniques.
You will also learn how to cross process with accuracy and to color correct your final outputs and prints.
What's inside this 10 Chapter book:
Chapter 1: Silver to Silicon
- Seeing Images
- In The Digital Darkroom
- Learning and Forgetting the Rules
Chapter 2: Digital Nuts and Bolts
- Building a Digital Darkroom
- Under the Hood: Essential Photoshop Preferences and Color Settings
- Photoshop Color Settings
- The Color Settings Dialog
- RGB Working Spaces
- Color Management Policies
- Conversion Options and Advance Controls
- Saving Your Color Settings
- File Navigation and Inspection
- Your Bags Are Packed
Chapter 3: Scan, Develop and Organize
- Form Analog to Digital
- Starting with Film
- Starting with a Digital Camera
- Working with Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom
- Bridge and Camera Raw or Photoshop Lightroom?
Chapter 4: File Preparation
- Essential Image Quality
- Noise Reduction
- Sharpening Process
- Correcting Optical Distortion an Perspective
- Spotting and Cleanup
Chapter 5: Tone and Contrast
- Understanding Tone and Contrast
- Listen to the Image
- Non-Destructive Editing
- Global Image Improvements
- Converting Color to Black-and-White
- Toning and Split Toning Effects
- Building a Solid Foundation
Chapter 6: Dodging, Burning and Exposure Control
- Interpreting the Image with Tone
- Non-Destructive Dodging and Burning
- Contrast and Exposure Control
- Seeing the Light
Chapter 7: Color Correction
- The Landscape of Color
- Global Color Correction
- The Power of Curves
- Color Enhancements
- Local Color Corrections
- The Power of Lab
- A Journey Through the Landscape of Color
Chapter 8: Creative Color
- The Structure of Color
- Working with Hue
- Creative Color Temperature
- Exploring Image Mode Blending
- Create Cross-Processing Effects
- It's a Colorful World
Chapter 8: Creative Enhancements
- Optical and Film Effects
- Darkroom Special Effects
- Adding Texture
- Fading Away: The Distressed Image
- Blending Textures into Skies
- Creative Edge Effects
- Enhancing the Visual Story
Chapter 10: Enhancing Focus
- Remove Distractions
- Sharpen with Finesse
- Valuable Noise
- Your Vision Comes First
The best written book about Digital Darkroom.
"Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature" by Matt Kloskowski (Peachpit Press)
ISBN-13: 978-0-321-53416-3
ISB-10: 0-321-53416-6
Last but not least the most extensive and yet comprehensive book about Photoshop Layers.
You got Layers for every taste, from beginners to most advanced features.
This is the most complete guide to Photoshop Layers and if you never used Layers before this is a must have book.
What you will find inside:
Chapter 1: Layer Basics
- Layer Basics
- Using Multiple Layers
- Everything Else About Layers
- How do I
Chapter 2: Blending Layers
- The Three Blend Modes You Need Most
- A Closer Look at Blend Modes
- Layer Blend Modes fr Photographers
- Advance Layer Blending
- How Do I
Chapter 3: Adjustment Layers
- Adjustment Layers Basic
- Making Selective Adjustments
- Super Flexible Adjustments
- Some More Adjustment Layers Ideas
- Fix One Photo--Fix 'Em All
- The Adjustment Layer Blend Mode Trick
- How Do I
Chapter 4: Layer Masks
- Layer Mask Basics
- Automatically Creating Layer Masks
- The Only Layer Mask "Gotcha"
- Combining Multiple Images
- A Deeper Look Into Layer Masks
- Making One Layer Fitting Into Another
- How Do I
Chapter 5: Type and Shape Layers
- Creating Type Layers
- All About Shape Layers
- How Do I
Chapter 6: Enhancing Photos With Layers
- Combining Multiple Exposures
- Painting With Light
- Selective Sharpening
- Dodging and Burning Done Right
- Boosting Specific Colors
- Enhancing Depth of Field
- Creating Soft Focus
- How Do I
Chapter 7: Retouching With Layers
- Removing Blemishes and Wrinkles
- Smoothing and Enhancing Skin
- Making Eyes and Teeth Whiter
- Removing Distractions
- How Do I
Chapter 8: Layer Styles
- Designing with Layer Styles
- Creating a Watermark
- Creating Reusable Photo Effects
- Some More Layer Style Ideas
- How Do I
Chapter 9: Smart Layers
- Four Reasons Why Smart Objects Rocks!
- Designing Templates with Smart Objects
- Layers and the Creative Suite
- How do I Learn More from Matt?
- How Do I
This is my gap fill book about Photoshop. Almost all the necessary techniques are well documented in this book and a must reference use.
And with this last one I conclude my overview on my must read books hope you enjoyed it and choose the one's that best fit you.
Tip: 12 Must Read Books (Part 1)
Tip: 12 Must Read Books (Part 2)
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