Book excerpt: This second volume provides a foundation for understanding the vigorous, relevant, and fascinating field of seismic processing, addressing that portion which precedes migration. Written for the non-expert, this second volume of the two-volume introductory text reveals the limitations and potential pitfalls of seismic data, prepares both seismic interpreters and acquisition specialists for working with seismic processing geophysicists, explains seismic processing operations as a series of solutions to problems, and demonstrates the dependence of a final interpretable seismic volume on its many seismic processing decisions. Although seismic processing is inherently mathematical, this text uses numerous illustrations and real data examples, providing an intuitive understanding of the seismic processing procedures and resorting to an algebra-based argument only on rare occasions. The first volume starts with migration. This second volume addresses pre-migration processing. In combination, these two volumes present seismic processing topics in order reverse of a typical processing sequence. Through this reverse ordering, the reader understands an algorithm's input requirements, providing motivation for understanding the preceding algorithm in the processing sequence.