The Digital Darkroom
Where The Magic Happens
What is the Digital Darkroom? It can be as simple as a photo printer on the corner of a desk, as elaborate as a Professional Photo Processing Lab or anywhere in between!
Most basic photo quality printers have image editing software included with the printer. Some, like Epson's PictureMate are called "A Photo Lab in a Box! You can lighten or darken the image, crop it to the size you require, convert a color image to black and white or sepia, even do some simple touch up right in the printer.
We carry one of these printers in our van. We use it for field proofs or for sharing pictures around the campfire when shooting JPEG or using our point-and-shoot cameras. The quality of the pictures are as good, if not better, then the prints you get from Wal-Mart and you can see them in just a few minutes! One drawback to the PictureMate is it does not read Camera RAW files! When shooting in Camera RAW and want to use a small portable printer like the PictureMate, be sure to set your camera's capture function to RAW+JPEG.
Perfect Color
If you are serious about making your images the best they can be you must have a calibrated monitor and a consistent source of light to view it in. Let's start with where to do your editing. A windowless room with overhead lighting at 4700K would be ideal, but how many of us can do that?
What we can do is try to keep the light in our viewing area as consistent as possible. Close the door. If there is a window near by, close the drapes. Use the same light source all of the time. Don't have the light source behind you if possible, overhead is best. Doing these simple things can help you to get the best color possible.
A calibrated monitor is the cornerstone of any Digital Darkroom. All monitors are different and their performance varies over time. To make critical color decisions and edits, you need a monitor that displays true colors. Buy the best monitor your budget will allow and calibrate it often (at least once a month) for consistent results.
There are many good color calibration systems on the market for you to choose from. We happen to use Color Vision's Spyder2 at the beginning of each week to make sure all of are monitors will produce accurate color to make critical edits and adjustments!
Equipment and Software
You'll also need a computer or laptop (PC or Mac), a storage device like an external hard drive for backing up your work and some image editing software. We use Abobe Lightroom 2.2, PhotoShop CS2, CS3, CS4, CorelDRAW X-3, Corel PhotoPaint and AlienSkin BlowUp (for enlargements).
I know CorelDRAW X-3 isn't an image editing program, but it is much easier to break an image into parts in CorelDraw than in PhotoShop CS4. And why would we want to do that? We'll get into that alittle later!
My favorite printer is the Epson Stylus PHOTO R2400. Color reproduction is fantastic, it is fairly fast, will make borderless prints, handles media from 4x6 to 13x19 sheets up to 1.5mm thick, roll paper and Fine Art Canvas.
For smaller prints, photo greeting cards and photo proof sheets, the HP Photosmart 7960 and the Epson Stylus Photo 280 are real work horses. We will discuss printers and printing in more detail in How to Print Like A Professional.
Our Digital Darkroom
So what do we have in our Digital Darkroom? We have two desktop PC's, four 20" flat panel monitors and one CRT (used mostly for business software), two laptops (for field work), two 1.5 TB external hard drives for backups and storage and four photo quality printers. We also have two regular flatbed scanners and a film and slide scanner (leftovers from when we were shooting film).
No matter how basic or elaborate your darkroom is, the most important thing to remember is to Enjoy Making Prints and Have Fun with your digital photography!
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