B&W Printing: Creating the Digital Master Print
 

This book has been getting a lot of buzz in the Leica printing forum. I've ordered a copy. Others may want to do the same.

"George DeWolfe is a master of the fine print: he studied with photographic geniuses Ansel Adams and Minor White, and worked as a consultant to the most significant companies in the digital photography world. Now, he passes on his considerable expertise to all, in a breathtaking new DIGITAL MASTERS guide that combines artistic concepts for taking beautiful photographs with an array of practical techniques. With interest in black-and-white exploding, digital photographers will rush to take advantage of the knowledge he imparts.



About the Author
George DeWolfe has published three books and is currently a senior editor for CameraArts magazine and an advisor to Epson America, Adobe, Hahnemuhle and Polaroid, and his honours include the Award for Artistic Excellence from The National Park Service."

Digital Masters: B&W Printing: Creating the Digital Master Print by George DeWolfe

Thanks, John. I will check this out.

I'm probably about halfway through reading it so far, and am a bit disappointed but I want to reserve judgment until I've read it all the way through so I'll report back in a bit.

I finished this book a while back. It doesn't deliver what it promises, and is mostly a combination of fluff and product marketing (he has a Photoshop Plug-In he wants to sell you).

There's lots of flowery praise about creating a "master" print, but very little in the way of concrete techniques that can help you achieve that. The 'how-to' section covers a pretty basic Lightroom workflow: start with global adjustments, convert to B&W, use the limited local adjustments available in Lightroom before taking the image to Photoshop. He does teach a dodge/burn technique using the History Brush that you might not have seen before, but IMHO it's no more effective than 'painting with light' or any number of other dodge/burn techniques.

And of course he repeatedly talks about his PercpTool plug-in, and how it transforms the image captured by the camera into the image perceived by our brains. But he's extremely vague on what the plug-in actually does. I've played around with the demo a bit (downloaded it before the windows version was pulled), you can read my mini-review here.

Bottom line, if you're completely new to digital B&W and want some basic tips on building a workflow around Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw) and Photoshop, this book might be a good starting point. More experienced users who already have a workflow and are looking for techniques to take the quality of their B&W prints to the next level will likely be disappointed.

Thanks John & Jeff. I usually buy these books to read on long trips.
Your reviews are highly appreciated.

Ditto the thanks. I was wondering about this as well.

My Cousin Vinny

"What are grits, anyway?"
"Grits are fifty cents."
"Yes, but what are they?"
"They 're extra."

johnastovall added 4 Minutes and 10 Seconds later...Double Post Merged Below

I'm just happy I canceled my order to wait on Jeff's review. Wish I could say the same for The Variable Contrast Printing Manual. Found out it had not been revised since 1999 all most all the products discussed don't exist.