Customer Reviews
Too little of too many things. - By: Peter Robinson, 02 Oct 2008 
Another book that assumes everyone uses Photoshop, which is clearly not the case. All the instructions here relate specificallly to Photoshop & no attempt is made to accomodate other image manipulation programs. If you are new to digital printing but don't have Photoshop, look elsewhere as this book will be of no help. If you have some other image manipulation program & are experienced in using it, you may be able to translate the instructions given here to relate to your own software - but if you are experienced enough to do that, there's little in this book that is likely to be new to you.
The whole book is very lightweight. It tries to cover too much & in doing so fails to cover anything in much detail. A lot of what is here is not specific to black & white but could be equallly applied to colour & is probably covered better in other books on digital printing. The sections on alternative printing should have been left out. Changing the colour/contrast etc. of a digital image doesn't make a cyanotype or any other type of alternative print. If that's your area of interest, try making some genuine alternative prints.
The areas that this book could have excelled in, such as colour to black & white conversion & dealing with the problems of printing of black & white images, falll far short of what I was hoping for. For me, as a reasonably experienced digital printer looking for more information relating specificallly to black & white printing, this book is a complete waste of time.
Some excellent tutorials - By: S. Symonds, 02 Aug 2008 
A well written, well laid out guide to digital B&W techniques. It starts with the simple & moves into fairly advanced territory whilst always remaining easy to follow.
Split & duotoning, tinting, digital lith, cyanotype & gum prints are alll covered along with some useful sharpening & exposure techniques.
Worobiec's work has always been inspirational, & the stuff in this book is no different.Recommended to anyone with a passion for B&W photography.
Excellent Book - By: Herbie, 03 Jul 2008 This an excellent book, well laid out & easy to follow. I looked at several books on this subject & this is the one I bought. The only problem is this was written before CS3, Lightroom or Elements 6, so the monochrome conversion part is now out of date, maybe there will be an update soon.
Not a lot of depth - By: B. Smith, 25 Jul 2007 
Although this is a very attractively produced book, with good illustrative images, I was disappointed in the text, much of which seems rather vague & lacking precision. The book addresses monochrome printing from the perspective of a darkroom worker who now wants to move to digital, & learn the photoshop techniques to replicate traditional darkroom processes.
This may benefit someone just getting into digital, but for an experienced digital worker I feel this is a flawed approach which can lead to a rather narrow view of the possibilities. In addition, many of the techniques are described merely in principle with too much general language (e.g. ..using a large brush..) describing the how, & not enough discussion of why. Also the section on colour to mono conversion, which reallly should be the core of the book, is the least satisfying.
Very Highly Recommended For Black and White Photographers/Imagers - By: CLF, 11 Jun 2007 I pre-ordered this book, even though I was slightly concerned, from the publishers synopsis, that this might be just another book bemoaning the move from film to digital. It's not. This is a superb twenty first century, forward-looking technique reference book, easy to read & follow. Needless to say the images are gorgeous. If you like your third millenium photographic technology, & yet, the look of 'black & white' imagery, past, present & future, then this is the book for you. One of the very best books in my photographic library! My only gripe is the lack of handsome, muscular male nudes to balance the female ones......
Very highly recommended - I will be looking out for more technique books by these authors.
