Web sites (please note the subscriber area also contains tutorial-specific links, but you need to be a registered user to access this section).

Lightroom Section:

Jeffrey Friedl's Blog - installation & management of Lightroom 2 plugins (Lightroom 2 and later)

The Digital Photography Connection - very informative video tutorials, including an overview of Lightroom 2's new features. Podcasts also available.

Lightroom News - it does what it says on the can!

Lightroom Journal - tips and advice straight from the Lightroom team

General:

PhotographyBB site - Your Digital Photography Community Website - includes a free PDF magazine with Photoshop tutorials and actions.

Photoxels.com - a good place to start: Fundamentals, Buyers Guide, Tutorials

Michael Bosanko - extraordinary light sculptures!

About.com - Working with Digital Photos & Scanned images
Ephotozine - news and reviews and forums, galleries - worth visiting just for 'Picture of the Week'
'What Makes a Picture Good?' - print criticism and hints (excellent resource)
Don't forget - good pictures require knowledge of composition. Good links here.
Focalfix.com - some excellent digital photography tips here
dcviews web site covering cameras, news, imaging.

123di.com - they produce a unique interactive ebook the 123 of digital imaging - see our review

Kodak - understanding picture quality (megapixel size/print output)
megapixel.net - good for galleries and reviews
Panoguide - a site devoted to shooting panoramic shots.
PhotographyBLOG - very strong on new cameras
Let's Go Digital - Dutch site, but also available in English.
The Luminous Landscape - look at this brilliant tutorial about histograms

FotoEspresso site - I wish they published these PDFs every week - but it is as rare as a good preacher. Follow this link for the PDF dealing with Histograms - if you don't know Histograms, you cannot be a digital photographer - sorry!

QTVR - QuickTime Virtual Reality (interactive panoramas)
dpreview - probably the best site on the net - news and user forums for most digital cameras
Pixel2life - good tutorials on PhotoShop
Rob Galbraith Digital Photography insights
ShortCourses.com - a brilliant site with tutorials from pixels to the digital darkroom - also free pocket guides
Steve's DigiCams site - news/reviews/forums

Infra Red photography - we will be covering this in class. Post processing normal shots from a digital camera doesn't really work because the IR info wasn't there in the first place. Better to shoot with a proper IR filter such as Hoya R72. Check this site for more details.

Aesthetics and Photography - how do art and technology interact?
The Imaging Resource
Vivid Light Photography - a good article on image file types, sizes and compression.
80four site; 'PhotoShop for photographers' , video tutorials. (needs QuickTime)
Colour gamuts explained - this page needed for calibration tutorial

Free resources:

Timothy Armes has a Lightroom plugin available called Enfuse which permits the blending of multiple exposures right within Lightroom! There's a free trial version or a full unrestricted option (make a donation).

Picasa - a simple way to organise your digital photographs. Album creation program, recently acquired by Google.
JAlbum - an elegant way to produce albums/galleries for the web, includes thumbnail generation, navigation, EXIF data, several skins available, good support, and totally free!

A splendid resource for Photoshop free actions - well worth 5 minutes of your time + some stunning specials.

If you own Adobe PhotoShop CS - there is a free plugin that allows you to view and manipulate RAW files from a variety of cameras. This URL points to the download and also the cameras supported with this release (3.6 beta).

Problem: The picture looks fine on the screen, but not very impressive from the printer. You need to calibrate the monitor (I will be covering this) and then calibrate the printer. Free test chart is available (Digital Dog) - view/save it. (406Kb JPEG).

Books & Periodicals:

'The Complete Book of Digital Photography', Tim Daly, Argentum, 2004. ISBN 1 902538 33 1

'The Photoshop X Bible Professional Edition' , Deke McClelland, Wiley, ISBN 076454179X - not the usual one, but the hardback version - normally costs £39.99 but available from Amazon UK at £27.99 inc free postage. This is PhotoShop on steroids (649pp), not the cut-down Elements version. You need a running copy of PhotoShop to gain much from this book (the full version costs nearly £500), and then you need to be 150% serious about your photography. This is the cover to look out for:

'The Digital Photography Manual', Philip Andrews, Carlton Books Limited, 2002. ISBN 1 84222 780 7

'Digital Photography - An Introduction', Tom Ang, Dorling Kindersley (DK), 2003. ISBN 1 4053 0235 6

'Brilliant Adobe Photoshop CS3' by Andy Anderson & Steve Johnson Pearson ISBN 9780273714385
It is brilliant - low cost in UK (RRP £16.99) but includes download links for tutorial PDFs and files. This publication makes my teaching at HoE and Hurtwood House a lot easier than most other books.

The best magazine - it was (past tense) Total Digital Photography - it was the kingpin of my tutorials, with excellent content, and good support material on CD. Sadly the new editorial team took over and totally destroyed the periodical - endless repeats of Photoshop tools, out-of-focus articles on how to do things that nobody would want to do - reviews of software that were so brief as to be useless. I was invited to add Sigma content -but the magazine was so dreadful that I didn't want to be associated with it. So what do we recommend? Try 'What Digital Camera' - the magazine is good, work samples are available from their web site for download. Digital Camera World is available as an electronic download from Zinio at a fraction of the print/subscription cost, but their support and download area is hit and miss - they didn't bother to reply to my email about the lack of CD content on Zinio. Popular Photography & Imaging is an American print publication - the July 2005 edition has a positive user review of the Sigma SD10 camera, and they manage a good shipping price to the UK unlike most North American periodicals. NAPP's Photoshop User is good, but too high-priced for anyone outside North America - $150 is utter lunacy. Presumably the inept NAPP management have never heard of PDF?

Future Publishing Ltd are producing an ongoing rollout of their 'Focus Guide' series (available for £7.99 from newsagents). Each edition comes with a book (approx 130pp), and a CD with easy-to-follow tutorials, video demonstrations,to help develop your Adobe PhotoShop skills. Back editions are also available for order.

In the UK, Focal Point run a book club on photography, with titles such as PhotoShop for Photographers, the digital darkroom, portrait photography, wedding photography, etc. The books are discounted and there is a good 'starter' package of 5 books for about £28 incl a free 'Adobe PhotoShop CS for Photographers' + CD. You need to buy at least four books from the first four mailshots, and postage can wipe out the discounts. They don't appear to have a website, but contact Customer Service on 0870-4422033.

Further information:-

A useful chart showing the number of images that can be stored on memory cards (from a range of 2>6 megapixel cameras). File sizes are approximate 'high quality JPEG'.

Reviews & Tutorial files:-

In most cases these are Adobe Acrobat files. Download the free Acrobat PDF reader from Adobe.

Enhancing photographs in PhotoShop part 1 and part 2. From PC Pro Aug/Sept 2004. Files are about 1.2 Mb each, and require Acrobat reader.