Have “experienced” George DeWolfe’s “Digital Photography Fine Print Workshop” book.
Didn’t say read, because Mr. DeWolfe is a talented photographer but annoyingly and extremely full of himself.
It’s this latter part that made the book so hard to read. He spends a huge amount of time telling the reader how great he is, and how fortunate they are that he is sharing his wisdom.
Very tiresome.
And, of course, there are the parts where he’s wrong.
Such as in his basic workflow, where he places noise reduction as the last thing done to the photo, prior to sharpening and printing, because “Noise…is the exact opposite of sharpening.” Huh? “Blur” is the exact opposite of sharpening.
This is a computer, folks, not a sentient being. Computers run programs that are looking, in this case, for a very specific condition: CCD noise and color noise, so it can effectively remove them.
It is NOT looking for contrast enhanced, color corrected, noise. It will never find that… because that’s not what it’s looking for.
You want your noise removal done as _early_ in the workflow as possible, not as late as possible.
As to the book as a whole, I’d give these comments:
It’s a very basic beginner’s book. If you want Fine Art Print information, get “Fine Art Printing for Photographers” by Steinmueller and Gulbins.
DeWolfe’s artistic advice is much better than his technical advice. If you want a good book on photos in Photoshop, get Martin Evening’s “Adobe Photoshop CS3 for PHotographers.”