The book has a compelling title and is co-authored by a popular Internet photo personality. It also has an interesting visual design which is strongly supported by some wonderful photographs (mostly by the authors I assume) and top-notch color printing. The type design is a bit jarring.

But in the final analysis the book presents little in the way of “art”-producing tips regarding conversion of RAW digital image files. Rather, it falls into the trap of trying to cover too much ground too thinly. For example, a significant portion of the book is devoted to presenting micro-manuals for several current RAW converters. This is low-value material that has a very short shelf life (one of the products has already been sold), generally represents nothing more than enumerations of product features, and is covered by the products’ documentation. The fact of the matter is that the current generation of RAW conversion tools has much more in common than in distinction. They could easily have been adequately, and perhaps more usefully, covered through a generalized discussion of these commonalities.

Much of the remainder of the book’s material is devoted to very basic coverage of generic topics such as workflow and understanding color (ugh).

In summary, this book is far from a presentation of the “Art of RAW Conversion”. Intermediate and advanced readers looking for insights and tips from “…active pioneers of RAW file processing and digital workflow” (as the authors’ descriptions are worded) will leave empty-handed. Beginners looking for a primer on RAW image treatment might find themselves so bewildered by the book’s attention deficit disorder format that they flee back to the familiar JPG image file format.

Bruce Fraser’s “Real World Camera Raw” and, more recently, Mikkel Aaland’s “Photoshop CS2 RAW” are both more direct and instructive treatments of the subject, albeit they both consider Adobe’s Camera Raw converter exclusively.