Recommended Reading

Many people still find reading a book easier than reading articles on line. There are many books available on digital photography and an increasing number on printing and colour management.
Below we've selected the four best books to read and have on your bookshelf. You can buy them directly from Amazon at good prices by clicking on the link on the right. If you can't see the links to buy these books on the right please turn off any 'ad blocking' function in your web browser for this page.

Colour management for photographers Andrew Rodney is one of the great 'colour gurus' that has promoted the widespread use of colour management in digital photography. This book covers all the things you need to know and explains them clearly without resorting to complicated jargon which makes it surprisingly easy to read. It also has a wealth of good clear illustrations to help as well. If you're only going to read one book on colour management this is probably the one to buy.
Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Martin Evening's book "Photoshop CS4 for photographers" is one of the best books on digital photography published, even for users of other imaging programs. Martin Does a great job of not just explaining the basic controls available are, but more usefully explains why you might want to use them. It's also packed with his own excellent photographs that demonstate he's not just another technical author, but a great practioner of digital photography himself.
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Martin Evening's book "Photoshop CS3 for photographers" is the version applicable to the last version of Photoshop.
Mastering Digital Printing This book only covers digital printing. Starting with short history of digital printing it covers all technologies and the second edition is very much up to date with current printers. It covers techniques, materials and mounting systems. Harald Johnson's writing style is easy to read and there's just about everything you need to know in here. It's well illustrated and really ought to be on the bookshelf of every photographer interested in digital printing.
Real World color management A less practical book than Andrew Rodney's "Color management for photographers", this is probably the book for anyone who wants to know more about the underlying principles of colour management. It also covers a wider range of applications and may be the best book for anyone trying to get to grips with preparing images for press publication. Bruce Fraser's manages to keep the text readable despite the inevitable technical detail the subject requires.
Other recommended products Adobe Lightroom Probably the best and most fully featured program for handling large image collections from digital cameras. This package will handle conversions from RAW camera files, handle almost any asset managemnet requirement for indexing and metadata, then it also has great presentations modules for display on the web, by slideshow and excellent printing options.

Useful resources on the internet

There are very many resources on colour management across the internet. Here are some of the best we've found so far.

• Norman Koren publishes a great site about digital photography. It is incredibly wide ranging, but his pages on monitor calibration and Printer calibration make fascinating and rewarding reading.

   
  

• Lagom LCD monitor test pages This site is a great resource for helping to set up LCD computer monitors. We'd still recommend using a hardware calibration system, but there is still a lot of useful information on this site to help you get the best from your monitor.

   
  

Once the basics are understood here are some more technical web sites that may be of interest to further understanding.

• Microsoft's implementation of colour management on Windows XP is set out on this site.

• Apple provide a similar site to explain the details of colorsync on OSX for Mac users.

• The real home of colour management is at the International Color Consortium. A real technical site.