Digital cameras have made taking snapshots a snap. No pun intended. These days everyone knows how to take a picture. Point, look at view pane and shoot. Does that mean you have just taken a great picture? Well… I’m sure for most of us not always.

'Digital Photography: The Missing Manual' is a great book by experts Chris Grover and Barbara Brundage. As all the fun picture taking times are approaching, getting better memories is a must, and this full color book will definitely get you some magical moments. This book takes an approach that will help you choose the best camera for you & get high quality results from it.

In Depth Basics:
This book really is for beginning Carl Ziess’. There are four sections: Digital Camera Basics, Organizing Your Photos, Editing Your Photos, and Sharing your photos. Each of these go into more detail regarding behind each topic.

Digital Camera Basics gets you started. This section talks about different types of cameras, memory cards, photography lingo, lighting, settings, composition, and much more. This I found to be a bit overwhelming as I was just ready to start snappin’ pics but it may prove useful for someone who has yet to buy a camera or actually cares.

The composition hints in this section are invaluable, and I find myself referencing to the 'kids & school performances' section quite often. With even this advice my pictures are looking much better.

Organizing:
I think for beginners one of the greatest aspects of this book is that they show you how to backup your photos. Once people get into digital photography one of the great disasters is losing a hard drive full of photos. It is something I am sadly a victim of and I am sure many others and this book does right by telling users to backup their photos.

Editing - Good to Great.
Photoshop Elements is covered in this area of the book. In this section slightly more advanced techniques are covered: resizing, color correction, retouching, and Elements quick fixes. This book really covers Elements really well.

Photo Sharing
Finally their discussion on sharing photos was great. There are many photo sites on the web and they give a good discussion of how to consider file size and some advice on resolution. Not to mention how to get better photos out of your printer without draining your cartridges.

Conclusion:
Overall the book does a beyond superior job at taking the novice photo taker through all the unknowns of cyber photos. The full color photos add to the quality of the book and the writing is easy reading. Over all it is an excellent first source for newbie photographers.