Jeffrey Tranberry - Power, Speed & Automation with Adobe Photoshop

Every day most of us rely on and use machines, gadgets, and software, but, in all honesty, we have very little idea about how they really work. Ill be the first to admit that the combustion engine baffles me. Im also a bit envious of the people whose automobiles arent noisy mysteries and who can change the oil without having to make an inconvenient appointment.

When it comes to Photoshop, many of us have never looked under the hood and are just glad that we know where the gas goes, so to speak. If you want to tune-up your Photoshop engine and take control of your image processing with a deep-dive into Photoshops preferences, settings and workspaces; if you want to a learn how to automate Photoshop with actions, batching, and scripting then you are holding the key that will put you into the drivers seat.

Even more important than understanding what the many dials, sliders, and scripts do, youll learn to appreciate that processing one image can be the starting point for processing hundreds, so that you can get back to taking better pictures rather than wasting time slogging through mind-numbing, repetitive image processing.

If all this talk of cars, combustion engines, and scripting make you anxiously lace up your sneakers, then allow me to introduce you to Jeff Tranberry and Geoff Scott, the talented authors of this book. Jeff and Geoff understand Photoshop on a very deep level, as they are both dedicated software developers with many years of experience at Adobe Systems. They wrote this book with the understanding that harnessing Photoshops powerto process many images very quicklyis only meaningful when it allows you to have more time to make better pictures.

Jeff is an artist turned product manager and Chief Customer Advocate for Adobe Systems Digital Imaging Team, which means that he both develops Photoshop and also listens to and works with many customers to understand how they use it. Geoff is an educator and photographer who was a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe Systems for seven years. He worked in the Digital Imaging group on Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and began using Lightroom nearly a year before the product was available to the public. Both Jeff and Geoff have taught classes, given presentations, and spoken about the tools of digital photography to groups large and small.

I have known both Jeff and Geoff for many years, and it was within my role as the Chair of the Masters of Digital Photography program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City that I was able to formalize our relationship. Jeff developed and taught the Scripting & Automation class for our online program while Geoff was a student in the inaugural year of the online program. As a faculty member in the program, I teach Advanced Imaging Techniques, and you can imagine how intimidated I was to have a former Adobe software developer in my class. But as all his classmates and I quickly learned, Geoff was a gracious and generous student who applied himself fully and creatively to develop his deep photographic talents, whose images grace the pages of this book. As a teacher, Jeff understands how to break down the complex into manageable building blocks of understanding. I am thrilled that they have collaborated so successfully to create this book on a subject matter that many understand to be important, but do not have the deep understanding to articulate. Jeff and Geoff have done that for usand now well all work more quickly and efficiently because of their effort.

Finally, let me tell you something that I tell all of my faculty members, Moving sliders and adjusting parameters is never the end goalcreating compelling images is. So, take the time to apply the knowledge in this book, and it will give you more time to create better and more meaningful images.