John Beardsworth - Advanced Black & White Digital Photography

My second book on digital b&w is a bang up to date guide to the mono digital darkroom.

I am pretty certain it's the only book on the subject that shows how to use the superb Black and White adjustment tool (introduced in Photoshop CS3), b&w conversion with Adobe Camera Raw smart objects, Lightroom 1.1 and Aperture 1.5. The old stalwarts are there, like how to use Channel Mixer, and there's lots on dodging and burning and local contrast control. Photoshop technique is one thing, but the underlying creative purpose is what's really important, so the book's really about the "whys" than the "hows".

John Beardsworth - Lightroom Essentials

Adobe Lightroom is a new program for the era of digital cameras that can shoot many frames per second. You come home with too many pictures and need to edit, make quick corrections, and add metadata so you and your clients can find them when you need. This book is about the workflow and looks at how you can work efficiently, shaking you out of the fine art one-off mentality and giving your the skills to manage and process large numbers of pictures.

John Beardsworth - Blending Modes Cookbook

Published November 2005

The Photoshop Blending Modes Cookbook for Digital Photographers explains everything there is to know about blending modes - how they work and what they can be used for.

Before writing this book I only really used Overlay, mainly for dodging and burning, and occasionally applied modes when instructed by Photoshop recipes that simulated smoke, rain etc. Books on Photoshop squeezed blending modes into a few paragraphs that do little more than rephrase the help file. There was a gap in the market and in people's knowledge, and at the very least that's what I wanted to fill.

Nowadays I routinely switch a Curves adjustment layer to Luminosity or Color, or see if Multiply or Screen sorts out an exposure problem, or see what a bit of Hard Mix might do. It's become a deliberate decision. So while some of the effects in the book may look strange, you learn a whole lot more. If blending modes become simply another everyday tool, then the book's a success.

Read some reader reviews at Amazon.com.

John Beardsworth - Fine Art Cookbook

My The Photoshop Fine Art Cookbook for Digital Photographers is another cookbook style approach with recipes that teach certain Photoshop techniques while showing how you can take your digital image and transform it to suggest the work of a famous photographer or painter.

So there are ways to use Photoshop to imitate Ansel Adams' style of black and white photography, or older processes like Dageuerreotypes or platinum printing, as well as some more modern fine art techniques like the various types of Polaroid manipulation.

Painters are also covered with recipes for creating van Goghs and Warhols but also less well known painters like Hokusai, Klimt, Escher, Gaudi ... yes, it was a fun book to write!

John Beardsworth - Digital black and white photography

My book on black and white photography was published in late 2004. Its target readership is "aspiring" and ranges from beginner to intermediate level. My "manifesto" was:

• How digital methods differ from film.
• What works better in black and white.
• it's about photography, not digital trickery.

The first half is on the camera (not just a digital one) and black and white images. So it discusses issues such as compostion, backlighting, tone and contrast, and why you should never use black and white camera modes.

The second half is on the digital darkroom and starts with the best ways to make black and white from colour. So don't just convert to greyscale or go to Lab mode. Then there's lots on adjusting contrast, dodging and burning, and on special effects like simulating infra red and reproducing darkroom effects such as split toning.

Read some reviews here and at Nikonians.

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