Rating: 4.5 out of 5 apples

Scott Kelby is the President and co-founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and is President of the software training, education and publishing firm KW Media Group. If you've ever read any of Scott Kelby's books, you will be familiar with the layout. The left column describes the graphic in the right column. This is good for the visual learner and since Photoshop is all about graphics anyway, this is very useful. The book is soft cover, has beautiful color graphics without a CD. The Table of Contents and the Index are very good.

Kelby guides you with step-by-step directions for an on-demand technique. The book is project-based which means that as you learn about the application you are also accomplishing a task often requested and needed by photographers.

Chapter 1 of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers was the most important for me. I had struggled to understand the import method in Lightroom (I will use Lightroom in lieu of its entire and correct title of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for the sake of space for the purpose of this review). Adding to my confusion was previous experience with Aperture and iPhoto, which do not offer as many importing choices.

Kelby unravels the mystery for me by stating clearly and in simple terms: "Click the top button to import photos from your memory card." My problem was the three ways that appear when you fire up Lightroom with a memory card in the card reader. You first see a smaller Import dialog plus a bottom button, if you want to choose files already on your computer, and a top button to import the photos.
Chapter One, Step Four, also gives a clear explanation of why it's best to choose Copy Photos to a New Location and Import or Copy as DNG. Step Five further explains how to organize your folder structure.

The tips throughout the books are jewels for making your experience with Lightroom more enjoyable.
My one complaint and it's no fault of the author is that I bought the book after Lightroom was updated to version 1.1. The new Paint tool, which replaces the Keyword Stamper tool, is not mentioned in the book. I also had trouble following the steps on "How to Automatically Back Up Your Database" in Chapter 2. The paths to do this are different in the new version. These settings are now catalog-specific and accessed via the Catalog Settings command. I also got lost when the steps to do something go beyond five. There is one technique that takes twenty-three steps!

This book will be essential for those who are adopting Lightroom for their photo-editing program. The newer version has many improvements and I can't wait to see an updated version of Kelby's book.

2007 Maria O. Arguello. Maria is the vendor liaison of the Main Line Macintosh Users Group (MLMUG). To see more reviews go to <http://Mlmug.org/Reviews.html>. Maria is also a member of NCMUG, PMUG, CCPMUG, MUGSNJ, PPUG, and SJAUG. She is the Apple User Group Regional Liaison for the Northeast United States (CT, DE, MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT).