I’ve recently purchased the fantastic Photoshop eBooks by Gry Garness. These are the first eBooks I’ve ever bought and the format is pretty slick. The books are password protected so you’ll need to enter a password each time you open the file-a slight inconvenience but not a huge deal. I’ve found the book is not searchable with (Apple) Preview 5.0 which is very unfortunate since I may be using that as my primary .pdf reader under Snow Leopard. The text is searchable using Acrobat and the feature comes in handy since this is a reference book with specialized information you’ll want to access from time-to-time.

I ordered the bundle of books which includes: Digital Retouching for Fashion, Beauty & Portrait Photography, Essential Color Optimization, and Essential Color Management. The retouching book is by far the most useful to me by providing a wealth of trade secrets that are used in the fashion industry. There is quite a bit of overlap between the three eBooks particularly in the area of color management. Nevertheless, there is a discount for picking up all three and the extensive information is very worthwhile, particularly with color critical imaging work such as magazines, product photography, and advertising photography. Garness suggests a very specific, practical workflow which keeps photo file data as clean (and editable) as possible throughout the process-from capture to output.

I’m not going to get too in-depth about what the eBooks cover, but I do highly recommend the books for professional photographers who want the very best reference information for high-end retouching and color management. Personally, I find color profiles and management are the most difficult skills in photography and graphic design to grasp and these books concisely cover the latest advanced principles. A preview of the books can be found at Google books.