» Book Tip: Adobe Lightroom - The missing F.A.Q

Today, I want to share with you something really cool. A friend of mine, Victoria Bampton (aka. The Lightroom Queen) has very recently released an e-book about Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The book is really cool, named "Adobe Lightroom - The missing F.A.W", it’s an F.A.Q with questions and clear, precise answers to them. It’s just a great way to be able to find the quick and clear answers to your questions if you have them and the book really contains most of the most asked questions there actually is about Lightroom. I asked Victoria to describe the book a bit, talk a little bit about her goals with it and why she wrote it. She kindly enough agreed to do it.
Lightroom was officially released on 19th February 2007 after a long public beta period, and it became an instant hit. The problem everyone had, though, was that it was an entirely new idea, and there was very little information available on how best to use it. The help files are never the most scintillating read, and half the information wasn’t in there either. As a result, people flooded the forums looking for information, and a really good community developed around it.
Over the course of time, I realised that exactly the same questions were coming up time and time again, and whilst a few good books had been published, there was no real reference material. A lot of people like to dive straight into software without ever reading a book, and just want a reference guide when it all goes wrong. Others will sit down and read a tutorial book, but when they have a question, tutorial books often don’t answer it. And if you got stuck, you’d have to spend hours searching the web for other people who’d had the same problem, or ask on a forum and wait ages for someone to help.I’ve spent so many hours answering all of these questions on a variety of forums, it made sense to compile it into a large FAQ book. It’s the questions that people ACTUALLY ask, rather than the ones that engineers think you will. It’s full of answers to questions that everyone hits at some stage, and other questions that you just don’t think to ask, but that make you say "oh, THAT’s how you do it…!!!" when you find out.It’s been fascinating to write - I started out thinking it might be around 50 pages, but it’s just grown and grown, and the 1.4.1 version is now 329 pages, and the 2.0 version will be even thicker. But the great thing is, it’s laid out in such a way that you can easily skip to the bit you want, and the PDF is fully searchable, in case you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for.So I’m just busy finished off the 2.0 version ready for release at the same time as 2.0…. in the meantime, 1.4.1 version is available for instant download, 2.0 version is available for pre-order on the website, and there’s a discounted bundle if you want the 1.4.1 version right now and to pre-order 2.0 too.
You can go and read more about this book over at her website, the Lightroom Queen. The e-book runs for £14.95 (which is about $29.95) and you can get it on her website. What’s more cool though, Victoria released a discount to readers of this blog, so upon checkout, just enter the code BM2008 for a discount on the book!
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July 4th, 2008 | Filed in: 










