The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC Book for Digital Photographers (Voices That Matter)

I'm only 37 pages into this book and though I admit the book looks pretty and simple to follow, I cannot express how truly terrible, disorganized and confusing the book has already been. Chapter 1 urges the reader to organize one's photos into a file system and place them on a backup drive, NOT the hard drive. Unfortunately, crucial information on how to do this properly, and pitfalls to avoid, was lacking and those omissions resulted in multiple duplicates of my photos in the Lightroom catalog. It's no small task eliminating duplicates from Lightroom--something not covered in this book--so I had to wipe everything out import thousands of photos again. Unfortunately, Chapter 2 contradicts the instructions in chapter 1, advising the reader to place all photos back on the hard drive otherwise loading photos will be too slow! That process was not as described and I lost most of my (but backed up) photo data. As a result of that, I had to wipe clean the Lightroom library again and import photos into the app's catalog system a third time! The author also advises the reader to organize the photos in a certain fashion in chapter 1, but as it turns out, a lot, if not most of the organization was unnecessary and in fact, will actually make it harder to organize them in Lightroom's catalogs and collections system. Given that the organization of photos consumes more than the first 100 pages of this 400+ page book, and I've already experienced glaring omissions and confusing circular instructions, I am fearful of the hours of my time the rest of this book will waste with its poor writing and design.
Update: Once past that nightmare, I think the book is helpful. Great effort is made to simplify complex operations, diagrams are reasonably good, the writing is engaging. There are a few glaring deficiencies in this book. I wanted to enlarge a photo to work on blemishes and such. How does one do that? Good luck finding it. It certainly doesn't jump out in the index. After an hour of infuriating fumbling around, I concluded that I need to go to the library view to enlarge, then back to the develop section to effect the changes. That's crazy. Is there a better way to do this? Impossible to know from this book. I wanted to jump to a step in the history to remove that step. It would have been nice to know that if I hit the delete key, the entire photo gets deleted, not the step I wanted to be removed. How does one reverse the delete or even copy that photo back into the collection in which I was working? I stumbled around for at least another hour trying to figure out how to make that simple move, and the book was no help. This is an author with a great reputation and a highly respected book. So then why isn't there a page that lists all the shortcuts? I had to create a page with the shortcuts myself, like ⌘F for a full view or R to crop. To me that's an incredibly basic list absent from the book.

So the book is helpful but there are some substantial and significant deficiencies.

If you are a current Lightroom user or a ‘wannabe’ Lightroom user, this is the book for you. To say that this book is full of information about Lightroom CC, is a gross minimization of it’s content. I have read and reviewed a number of Scott Kelby books. To me this is his best one yet. We’ll get into the reasons for that statement shortly. First, some info about the book itself.
The book is an 8 inch by 10 inch soft covered volume consisting of 479 pages. It is well printed on good stock making it easy to read. The pages are done in the normal Kelby format with the illustrations printed on the spine side of each page with the associated text printed alongside. Thus, the reader is saved the trouble of trying to find the pictures to go with the words or vice versa. It certainly makes learning easier. The book is rated at an Intermediate to Advanced User Level. Given the content, I would agree with that designation. Its suggested retail price is $49.99, however as of the time of this writing it was available on Amazon for $30.52 (paperback) or $25.49 (Kindle).

Ok, some details on the contents. As you can imagine, it uses many illustrative photos. Kelby does provide a website at which they can be downloaded. Following along with the author does make for a better learning experience. If you are new to Lightroom or still somewhat shaky on using this program, the author recommends starting at the beginning and following the text religiously. I think that would be a smart way to proceed. I have used Lightroom in the past but much of the processes were new to me, so I did go page by page. The book has a very comprehensive Table of Contents and a twenty-page Index. If the reader has some prior knowledge of Lightroom, this makes finding particular subject matter much easier.
One facet of Lightroom that was new to me was Kelby’s inclusion of his system of organizing images which he calls SLIM (Simplified Lightroom Image Management) system. In fact, it takes up 105 pages of the book. However, after going through it, I could see many benefits that would be derived from its use. It is quite an image organization system which new Lightroom users should follow and which readers who already have Lightroom experience should consider adopting. It may take some time setting it up, but the payoff will come in its constant use from then on.
After 126 pages, Kelby gets to the processes available in Lightroom to actually edit your photos. If you have ever used a Kelby book before, you will remember that he is a task-oriented author. That is, much of the “how to” portions of the book take a given procedure or process and, in several pages, he provides a step-by-step procedure to accomplish the task at hand. This book is no different and that is a good thing. I can recall using some of his prior books on Photoshop and just having to look in the Table of Contents for the task I wanted to accomplish and finding and following it to a good result. Thankfully he continues that modus operendi in this book also. Thus, the reader can find considerable use for this book as a reference in problem solving in Lightroom.
Also included in this book are chapters on integrating Lightroom with Photoshop. Creating beautiful photo books receives some space followed by Printing and Video. There is a chapter devoted to integrating Lightroom on your computer with a Lightroom program on your mobile device. Finally, after the reader has digested all the previous information, Kelby provides the workflow process he employs from shooting the photos to final printing thus giving the reader a practical view of integrating that information into everyday use. Two Lightroom CC modules, namely, the Web and Slideshow modules are not covered in this book. However, Kelby does provide an Internet address at which information on these modules can be found.
This is a book on handling your photos from inception to printing. It is full of very useful information that any Lightroom user will welcome. The reader, however, should not get the impression that the book is a fast read. It does take some time because of the extensive subject matter, however, the author endeavors, and succeeds, in presenting it in a very understandable fashion. If you want to learn Lightroom CC, here’s your vehicle to success.

I've read his previous Lightroom books and unfortunately, besides changing his work flow, there is not enough "new" info to make this worth buying. But for me what was really disappointing was the fact that there are glaring typos - doesn't anyone proof anymore? I wouldn't even call them misspellings - just typos but come on! Maybe he's just dashing them off so quickly that they are not vetted but I found this one had more "fluff" than his other books and too much time spent on modules that most users don't bother with.

I first learned Lightroom reading Martin Evening’s 2009 book on Lightroom 2, but thought I should upgrade my manual to reflect improvements over the past nine years so I purchased Scott Kelby’s latest. My impression is that Kelby’s is overly simplistic – it would probably work well for someone that has no Lightroom experience, but anyone with any digital photo manipulation experience would likely find it too elementary. I am still finding myself going back to Martin Evening’s old manual for information. The two books are about the same size, but Kelby’s has an inordinate amount of fluff and an overabundance of photo examples.

Scott Kelby writes the best photoshop books. I've started going through it and have learned things already, even though I'm a somewhat experienced Photoshop/Lightroom user.

Excellent book for Lightroom it can be used as a quick reference guide.

The book is well written. However, many of the pictures of the Lightroom screenshots have text so small you can’t read it without a magnifying glass. This is a big waste of space and time on for the reader.

I read Kelby's earlier edition several years ago and found it very good and helpful. But I really have not been following all the changes/improvements Adobe has been making to Lightroom over the years. This edition on Lightroom CC is introducing me to many of those changes I knew nothing about. And these changes are for the GOOD. Many procedures are much easier now but I never knew anything about them until I started going through this book. Get it!! You will not regret it!!

Has all the newest features. Easy to follow. Some nice Special effects

This is a great book with a good systematic approach to understanding Lightroom which is a rather complicated software program. This enabled me to understand and take advantage of the software's capabilities. Highly recommended.