by David Blatner, Glenn Fleishman, Stephen F. Roth

isbn: 0201696835
subject: Nonfiction
finished: 2/7/1999

I like this book. It presents a lot of information without overwhelming the reader with details, and it manages to be both introductory and reasonably technical. Also, instead of describing specific hardware and software, it covers general principles of scanning and general capabilities of modern image manipulation software, with an emphasis on the decisions and techniques required to produce good scans. Even so, Real World Scanning and Halftones will probably be out of date within a few years since these capabilities are likely to keep improving.

Because I read this book to get some background on scanning before starting a project to digitize a lot of old negatives, I expected to skim or skip the section on halftones. Instead, it was very interesting, and too detailed in only a couple of places. So, even though Real World Scanning and Halftones is clearly aimed at the desktop publishing professional, it's also useful for amateur scanners and web designers.