Authors are notoriously bad at answering questions about how their offerings should be read, because it’s hard for them to put themselves in the position of someone who isn’t familiar with what they’ve written. A couple of readers have already commented here; on the colortheory list four more commented, appended below.

Aroha’s separate reply makes the good point that if you are starting to use the PPW panel you can get good results with it without necessarily knowing why it works. Of course, knowing the gory details is beneficial, and if you are in this position, perhaps MPCW might be the place to start.

Dan

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Date: September 8, 2014 12:19:46 PM PDT

Of course the answer is easy….the latest book published by Dan
Marguils should be first.

Modern Photoshop Color Workflow

Then, you simply collect all his other books going backwards in time.
Professional Photoshop: The Classic…1998

Photoshop LAB Color: 2006

and the rest….

Hector Davila

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Date: September 9, 2014 8:55:07 AM PDT

If you are going to read both books, I would start with the LAB book,
for it makes MPCW easier to understand and use.  Your skill at
applying MPCW will be much better if your understanding of LAB is
really good.  Here’s a reading program I have in mind, and it is
similar to what I have done:

1.  Read the LAB book, doing all exercises, but not using Photoshop at all;
2.  Read MPCW, doing the exercises, but not using Photopshop at all.
You can skip the second half of chapters when you feel like it.
3.  Reread whatever you feel like rereading, using Photoshop either
now or soon, either with your own images or Dan’s.  When you reread,
starting over at the beginning may be best.

Jerry Fusselman

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Date: September 10, 2014 11:22:57 AM PDT

I have a different opinion.

I would always advise to start with the latest Professional Color Correction book (5th edition), as it teaches all the theory of channels, color spaces and color correction techniques. It lays the fundament, so to say. Both other books should better be read after that.    

I myself read Dan’s books in chronological order, starting from PCC5. Although it’s hard to imagine how the experience would have been had I taken a different order, I found this a very effective learning path.

Gerald Bakker

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Date: September 10, 2014 9:00:49 PM PDT

I’ll throw my two cents into this discussion. 

Begin with the Lab book. Then you get that out of the way, and you have Lab under your belt. Without knowing how to read numbers in Lab, the other stuff will be much more difficult. If you know Lab numbers, you won’t be scratching your head all the time wondering what Dan is talking about in his other books. This is why I got through that book right away.

Next, get into the Professional Color Correction book. Now that you know the Lab color space, you can start measuring color values quickly, and also learn all the other stuff about contrast enhancement.

Keep in mind, Dan’s techniques are about speed. Reading Lab numbers to determine color accuracy is the fastest method compared with reading  RGB and CMYK numbers. So, if you don’t know how to read Lab numbers, you won’t get the most out of the Professional Color Correction book.

Then, finally, get into the Modern book. This book teaches you more about running the actions than it does about the nuts and bolts of the PPW and Photoshop in the way the other two book do. The other two books get you deep into the trenches with Photoshop. The modern book is a breeze once you’ve read the other two book at least four dozen times each.

But, in my opinion, to really learn Photoshop and the PPW, you should read all three books.

Also, get on Kelby training and watch his training videos there too at least 43 times each. Then you will be as good as Dan.

All of this will take all of your free time for the next three years, but it’s time well spent.

Philip Warner

Cheers,
Aroha.

I have just discovered your excellent training resources online and I am about to purchase either Modern Photoshop Color Workflow or Photoshop LAB Color books or both, as I would like to get to grips with some of the LAB colorspace techniques you teach and I hoping you would answer several questions to help me decide?

1. How much of the 2006 LAB Color book is duplicated in the 2013 Photoshop Color Space book i.e. have most of the earlier LAB techniques been updated and included in Photoshop Color Space, therefore I don’t need to buy both books or is LAB color still more in-depth on those processes and still current for LAB techniques in CS6 so is a must purchase as well?

2. Obviously I haven’t read your books yet but I am wondering if there is any reason why I couldn’t work on the retouching files in LAB mode the whole way until the end. When retouching I tend to create a Master file with an “embedded camera profile” colourspace to preserve the exact information recorded buy the chip and when completed I copy, flatten and convert this delivery file to either Adobe 1998 or the larger ProfotoRGB. Most master files I work on are shot on a 60 megapixel chip, with multiple plates, comps and effects so that I can go back over and adjust the individual elements at will and with fresh eyes. I can imagine that on complex jobs I will be going back and forth between RGB and LAB modes to make my tone and colour adjustments if I can’t stay in LAB mode which apparently has a degrading effect, but will this be much of a problem with 200mb layers?

Kind Regards

Barry

Usually we don’t have to worry about such images (grossly defective due to error by photographer) because we throw them away and use something better.

The lesson here is the same one shown in Figures 14.18 and 14.19. Setting full range in the Adobe modules introduces more colored noise than if the file had been acquired flat and range was set in sRGB or Adobe RGB; and *much* more noise than if the work had been done in LAB.

The real-world significance is not great, because in ordinary photos we can’t tell the difference. But the technical inferiority is a useful observation in light of all the hype about data purity and why we should do as much work in raw modules as possible so that we don’t get noise and banding and halitosis and God knows what else.

Your point about noise reduction in this particular image confirms, I think, these new recommendations. If we ignore noise during the correction then noise will become a problem. If we do an early noise reduction there are three possibilities. The delightful one is that it may make the noise palatable if still discernible, in which case the problem vanishes. The moderate one is that the noise persists and we have to remove it ourselves, but it’s no bigger effort than if we hadn’t done the early noise reduction. And the bad one is that the noise is still present but now it’s harder for us to get rid of.

My observation is that it takes an extreme case to provoke the third possibility, which is why I recommend leaving the noise-reduction on by default, but being alive to the need to turn it off in extreme cases. The photo you have described certainly qualifies as an extreme case. So I would definitely do as much work as possible outside of the Adobe modules.

Fortunately, we don’t see extreme cases very often, so the conversation is largely of academic interest.