Get single field valure from node object
Entity API

Documentation says: The Entity API provides wrapper classes you may use to make dealing with the values of an entities properties and fields easier. Wrappers make it easier to get and set the values of fields and properties as well as to programmatically retrieve additional information about these elements and iterate over lists of values in a consistent manner.
https://drupal.org/node/1021556

    // Create wrapper around the node.
    $wrapper = entity_metadata_wrapper('node', $node);

    // We can do it also using only $nid.
    $wrapper = entity_metadata_wrapper('node', $nid);

    // Get the value of field_name of the node.
    $wrapper-&gt;field_name-&gt;value();

    // Get the value of field_name of the nodes author's profile.
    $wrapper-&gt;author-&gt;profile-&gt;field_name-&gt;value();
    $wrapper-&gt;author-&gt;profile-&gt;field_name-&gt;set('New name');