I was not familiar with Mitchell Kanashkevich until this week when his name and book showed up all over twitter and my daily blog cycle. I don't typically buy e-books but based on photographers I highly respect recommendations, bought Understanding Post-Processing. For $12, you get 5 tutorials in a very quick 37 pages.
The 5 chapter style reminded me a bit of Scott Kelbys 7-Point System Book. Each chapter is a new photo and processed start to finish. One difference being this book is primarily Lightroom and Scotts book was ACR and Photoshop.
Quote from the intro:
"Usually my main objective with post-processing is to make the photograph that comes out of the camera match the image that was captured with my eyes and processed with my brain. That image looks striking, but believable. It is not adjusted to the point where my Lightroom/Photoshop work takes up all the attention. A ‘believable image’ doesn’t however mean that the final look can’t border on the surreal. In real life things often look magical and surreal and if you or I feel the magic at the time of shooting, it’s only reasonable to re-create it in the image. We just have to make it as ‘real-life magical’ as possible."
This PDF is fairly easy to recommend. It's cheap enough to "just buy" and has enough content to demonstrate his post processing steps. This is not a book that will teach you Lightroom and it does expect some working knowledge of the software. It is screenshot heavy which makes for a very quick read.
Don't buy if you need a ton of explanation. This book is a quick before and after photo with a list of all the adjustments made. The use of overlay edit maps is used to illustrated selective dodge and burn editing.
$12 seems like a very reasonable price to see some behind the scenes of how another photographer works.
For more, visit: www.mitchellkphotos.com