The postproduction tutorials for the 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, but if you don’t have a lot of experience with either app, or need a refresher, we’ve posted a page with introductory videos from Ben Long.
Links to all of our support material can be found on the Complete Digital Photography 9th edition support page. If you’re still using an earlier version of the book, we also have dedicated support pages for the 8th edition and the 7th edition.
We’re happy to report that an updated version of Complete Digital Photography 9, with higher print quality, is now in stock on Amazon. Since our previous message, we’ve pored over proof copies from the two largest print-on-demand companies, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and IngramSpark. (We had been printing using IngramSpark’s basic color process for the original release, and tried out their higher-end print service for this test.)
Ben and I ultimately chose to go with KDP to print and distribute the book on Amazon. The quality of the photos was clearly better than either of IngramSpark’s two color printing processes, and KDP’s binding seemed to be better than the occasional (and slipshod) binding issues we were seeing with IngramSpark.
Because we had to move to a higher print level, we had to price the new version at $64.99. With the higher printing cost, and with KDP taking a bigger cut of the proceeds, it was impossible to keep the book at the old price.
Amazon still has a few copies of the original version in stock, but the new version has a different ISBN identifier (978-1-7326369-2-7), and there is a note about the update in the description. You can find the new book’s page here. (Once the inventory of the old version has been depleted, any confusion between the two versions should fall away.)
We are also working on the ebook version of Complete Digital Photography. The text is in very good shape, but the images need some HTML/CSS love to get them to be displayed optimally on both Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks platforms. It’s a bit tedious, but we’re on it, and we’ll let you know when we have firmer dates.
If you have any questions, the best way to start the conversation is to send us an email.
Thanks!
Rick
We’ve hit a snag with the ninth edition of Complete Digital Photography, and as a result have pulled the book from distribution while we work through the issues. This is not something we wanted to do, but it is clear that the print quality of the book isn’t at an acceptable level for some readers. We are looking at alternatives to the company that handled the printing and distribution, and once we have determined a path forward, we’ll make the book available again. (The ebook version is underway on a separate track, and we’re still targeting next month for the release of the ebook for Amazon and Apple’s stores.)
Ben and I are in the midst of our final push to get the 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography out the door (the final cover is on the left). My office is littered with page proofs — each chapter gets read a minimum of eight times — and my ever-patient wife is wondering if we’ll ever get this darn book out, but we’re feeling confident overall.
[UPDATE (December 2018): The ninth edition of Ben’s Complete Digital Photography is now available. You can find out more on our CDP9 book page, or, you can order the book directly from Amazon.]
Ben would really, really like you to buy the upcoming 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography, but he adds that there’s nothing that will help make you a better photographer than to practice. Specifically, to practice the art of seeing.
Get out there and practice, practice, practice!
Sign up today for our email list, and we’ll send you information on the 9th edition as we have it, including sample chapters, discounts and more.
We hit an important milestone this week with the 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography: we received the first proof copy of the book from our printer, and it looks great!
In the last couple of weeks, we prepared the first half of the book to be printed as a test. We wanted to check the general layout, making sure the margins were correct and the fonts readable. We also wanted to get a sense of the look and feel of the book in its new, slightly larger, format. Plus, since it is a book about photography, we also wanted to make sure that the images looked good when printed on our chosen paper type.
Overall, we’re very pleased. The cover looks awesome, and the feedback we’ve gotten from others is that it’s clean and readable inside, with a good balance of images and text. It’s a great feeling to see the physical fruits of something that you’ve worked on for so long, and know that you’re getting closer to the finish line.
We should have the 9th chapter of the upcoming book available as a free download in the next few weeks. If you’re a subscriber to the blog, we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. If you’re not a subscriber, it’s quick and easy to sign up for our low-volume mailing list. (You’ll also get the first shot at the book when it’s released in December.)
For more information about the book, check out the Complete Digital Photography 9 video update from Ben Long.
Ben remains hard at work on the 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography (“chained to his desk,” says Rick.) And yet, he still found time to send us a short video about how the creative process of publishing — i.e. the “slog” — informs his photographic work, even when he can’t get out and shoot.
It’s all about looking at your photography with a fresh eye.
Ben’s observation, that we could see our work in a different way by setting it aside for a while, is a good exercise. It can separate you from the moment you took the shot, giving you an alternative process for analyzing your photos. (Mixing things up from time to time is also a great way to give you a fresh perspective on your photography.)
While we were working on this post, we learned, sadly, that one of photography’s great practitioners of the “set your work aside” school, Henry Wessel, had passed away recently. Wessel was one of the more interesting photographers of the past 50 years, obsessed with the light — and the sense of place — of the West in all its forms. Part of the infamous “New Topographics” movement of the mid-1970s, Wessel was well-known for developing a roll of film, printing a contact sheet, and sticking it in a drawer for a year. We loved this quote from the New York Times obituary:
“If you let some time go by before considering work that you have done, you move toward a more objective position in judging it,” he said. “The pleasure of the subjective, physical experience in the world is a more distant memory and less influential.”
Give it a try. And, while you’re at it, don’t forget to sign up today for updates to Complete Digital Photography. Get sample chapters, discounts, free ebooks and more.
Ben Long sent us a short video update from his top-secret writing lair. He tells us that is working hard to finish the 9th edition of his Complete Digital Photography book. Well, mostly…
If you would like to find out more regarding the next edition, check out our recent post, Update on the 9th edition of Complete Digital Photography. To stay informed about updates, sign up for our upcoming books list, and we’ll let you know when the book is available. We will also send information on free sample chapters, book discounts and much more.
This blog has been published in various forms since 2001. Ben started with hand-crafted HTML before moving on to the WordPress platform in 2004 (or thereabouts—our memories are hazy on these points), and I (Rick) have helped out here and there at various times over the years—and over on our dear, departed sister site, Printerville.
[If you’re interested, you can see the first version of the site over on the Wayback Machine, as well as some choice variations along the way. Be kind, please.]
Since the beginning, this website’s primary focus has been to support the various editions of Complete Digital Photography with example files and extra content, and that’s been our only constant since this site went live. The support page for the current 8th edition of the book is here; and you can still access the the 7th edition’s support page here.