This is the second book by DuChemin I have read, and the umpteenth tutorial for Lightroom. What sets this book apart is that it not only describes what DuChemin does in Lightroom, but more importantly, *why* each step is taken.

The first part of the book delves deeply into DuChemin's thought process in general, somewhat more concisely than his other books. If you already read "Within the Frame", as I have, this first part doesn't offer many new ideas. Still, what is there is as insightful as ever.

The second part applies these ideas, concretely, in Lightroom, to twenty images. This is genius. It bridges the gap between theory and practice, something I missed in every single book (on crafts) I have read so far. I can not overstate the power of seeing how DuChemin implements his ideas in practice. It really made these ideas click for me in a way they hadn't in his other book I read.

And the funny thing is, I don't even like his style that much. But seeing how he creates his works made me think about how I would do it differently, which is honestly even more valuable than just nodding along in perfect agreement.

I think these ideas could be driven even farther. Maybe the "theory" sections could be integrated into the "application" part, with particularly fitting example images. Or maybe one could try to extract common "rules" or "tools", like "brightening faces using the adjustment brush" or "recovering blown skies with a grad filter", and then label these operations more explicitly in the workflows. This might even build to a photographer-specific "toolbox". This could tighten up the Lightroom sections a bit, which tended to be somewhat repetitive. And finally, some of the pictures seemed a bit redundant, as a similar picture had already been presented a few chapters earlier.

Still, none of this detracts from the fact that this was one of the most insightful, and effective, books on digital photography and RAW processing I have ever read. ( )

This is something of a Lightroom workbook. Duchemin begins with an excellent intro to his photographic/educational theme: Vision. Everything he publishes relates to Vision, and it is all helpful. This book begins with that summary, and then has an overview of Duchemin's postprocessing process in Adobe Lightroom. It's not an exhaustive how to, but a reflection from Duchemin's own style. Finally, Duchemin walks us through his postprocessing on 20 of his own images, step by step, and telling us why he chose to do what he did - all in pursuit of his photographic vision. I believe the book gives you access to those raw images so that you can follow along also, but I borrowed mine from the local library so I can't tell you that for sure.

All in all, I learned a few new tricks in Lightroom that I can use to craft my own photo vision. ( )