As far as books are concerned , I found that obtaining quite a few selections and then spending a year reading and playing around on the same topic, but using different authors approach helpful.
Katrin Eisman *sp* is outstanding
Kelby Training at $19 per month is worth every penny
I met with Katrin, at her offices in SVA New York , after about a year into the various books, She spent a day with me de mystifying a lot of stuff floating around in my mind.
A year later I took another two days with her , specifically on Lightroom,
Dan Margulis... What can I say, he teaches here in Toronto so I signed up for the beginning , advance Photoshop DPA offers , that are mandatory before you take one of his courses. Basically taught by knobs trying to convince me how to use a marquee tool to put a apple over a sunflower over a sky.
Total horseshit but I had to do it to get to Dan.
In total I took 4 three day sessions with Dan three in Toronto and one in Chicago , each day 12-15 hours of total hell, frustration and very little mercy by Dan and the other students.
He will talk for 1-2hours then make you work on 4 images and apply what he talked about.
Then all images were pitted one against the other and he was merciless in his critique.
I would not advise anyone to take his courses unless you have a very, very thick skin.
No plug ins, no selections, just plain out curves, sharpening, contrast control through channels and other devious methods too long to mention.
Lots of RGB, CMYK, LAb movements and channel work.
I have his books and they are a hard read and quite frankly unless one really needs to know this shit I think working in Lightroom is advised .
He takes you way farther than where you want to go, If you believe all his movements will help, then one is mistaken as some methods do not work for my digital workflow.
I am still trying to catch up with this amazing man and I never will.
We do use the three modes in moderation daily, and for specific reasons way to numerous to mention.
Through our workshop I am now preparing a series of PS day and weekend series that simply take one through the 5-12 steps to make a good image, breaking it down into moduals,
Scott Kelby does this with his 7 step method , and I intend to mimic some of his teachings for our workshop.
Things to look at that are important to all the teachers and books I have read.
1. Colour Theory,, understand the colour wheel, Additive Subractive
2. Colour Management.. understand how PS needs to keep everything in control*** very difficult, and not very well defined area **
3. Colour nuetralization.. I prefer curves , others use lightroom,camera raw white balance, others use levels
4. Building image weight through channels and apply image.
5. mode change to Lab for contrast control, dodge burn with blending modes, sharpening in Lab, splitting colours in Lab.
6. mode change to RGB for final colour , density tweaking.
I have made many high rez, glossy maginfications of files from RGB - LAB-RGB and can confirm as Margulis will state the there is no image loss.
LAB is a huge colour space , much more than its cousin RGB and even more so than the smallest cousing CMYK.
Therefore moving into LAB is not problematic, but be warned making moves in LAB can be very destructive if you are not careful.Much like using a sledge hammer to put in a finishing nail.
I figure in about five years and 50thousand images in my belt I will have a better handle on this process.
There is no definitive book, but rather hundreds that give good info.
It is up to the photographer to work on 20 images today and make decent prints
one year from now take the same 20 raw images and rework and make prints. after a year of study.
Its funny how the second round look better.