Reknowned photographer, and Photoshop/Lightroom posterboy Scott Kelby has released his latest book, the 7 Point System for Photoshop CS3, and it’s marching it’s way into people’s homes left and right.
While I am looking forward to getting a copy, I am also a little concerned about the fact that CS3 is in the title. Usually when a specific type of software is in a books title, it means that specific generation is required to take full advantage of the concept behind the book. This concerns me because while I do plan on getting to CS3 eventually, I am still fairly happy with CS2, and was not planning to upgrade any time soon. It also strikes me as a little odd as Scott has also indicated that Lightroom has also become a standard part of his work flow. So…what should the rest of us be doing? Should we be upgrading to CS3? Should we be going out and getting Lightroom? What about both? What about those that use alternative setups like Corel’s software, or even (gasp) The GIMP?
It seems that if this is a 7 point system that teaches you how to identify the “7 things” to take your photos from bland to beautiful, that these 7 things could theoretically be applied under a multitude of software setups. Is this another way of trying to convince us to upgrade to software when we really don’t need to? I am all for innovation and upgrading, and for improvements in technology, but if this is a system or a way of working with photographs, I would rather have a system that can be applied across multiple environments regardless of the underlying software.
I guess it’s the computer geek in me, because when troubleshooting networks and hardware problems, we follow a standard procedure for pinpointing problems. Very much like the scientific method, this works well regardless of whether you are in a Windows environment, Macintosh, Unix,Linux, Solaris, or any other setup. It works universally.
For the 7 point system to be effective (and the fact that Scott is trying to get copyright protection on the process) it seems this would thus be a process that could be applied across many environments. Ideally, that would be the case. et the title, and some of the comments on his blog, seem t suggest this system is somewhat proprietary to the CS3 setup. I’ve posted the question on his blog, so hopefully we’l find out about portability soon. More when/if that happens.
So, what about you, readers of CB? Has anyone out there read the book? What are your thoughts on it? Can you take the concepts and methods and port them to CS2, Lightroom, the GIMP, or some other software setup? I’d love to hear your feedback here (or via email). Thanks in advance for sharing any of your thoughts!
