My Digital Darkroom

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My Digital Darkroom Other Cool Stuff

• G. William Buchanan, FPSA

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Why a Digital Darkroom?

• Why did I decide to do this program?

• As EID Chairman for PSA and my own camera club I
  have had the opportunity to view a lot of images
  from around the world.

• I saw a need to reinforce the techniques we
  learned in the wet darkroom and transfer them to
  the PC.

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Why a Digital Darkroom?

• In the wet darkroom we had techniques that we
  developed over a period of time
• We had special techniques to enhance our prints
• We dodged, burned, toned, spotted and we had
  other chemical treatments such as ferrocyanide

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Why a Digital Darkroom?

• We now have the ability to create our own
  Masterpieces in the comfort of our home office
• While seated in a comfortable environment
• No messy and dangerous chemicals
• And, in less time with predictable results

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My Digital Darkroom Tools

• SOFTWARE
• Image Editing Photoshop CS3 www.adobe.com
• Image Editing Photoshop Lightroom
• Corel Painter X
• And, on occasion Photoshop Elements 6.0

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My Digital Darkroom Tools

• Why I shoot RAW file Format
• When you photographed with film did your camera
  process your images?
• Consider a latent image on undeveloped film. Once
  processed, it becomes a negative or transparency

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My Digital Darkroom Tools

• Why I shoot RAW file Format
• Highest quality images are obtainable from the
  RAW format. You always have a latent image.
• The Nikon D70 captures images from a 12 bit
  sensor and converts them to an 8 bit jpeg image.
  This process reduces the tonal range of the
  image.

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My Digital Darkroom Tools

• Photoshop is like a musical instrument...

you play at least an hour a day just to keep
your current skill level. Even working with it
8-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week, you become
an "expert" in the aspects of the program that
you use. The program has so many strengths that
it is seldom that one person uses them all.
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My Digital Darkroom

• Digital Workflowwhat is it?
• Think of a workflow as the way we worked in a wet
  darkroom.
• We developed our black white negatives
  according to a process to suit our
  standardsi.e. D76 _at_ 68 for 7 ½ minutes, stop
  bath, rinse, fix, rinse again and dry.

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My Digital Workflow

• A workflow should be simple but efficient.
• Rule No. 1 DO NO HARM TO PIXELS
• Rule No. 2 Make a duplicate
• Rule No. 3 Save Often
• When all else fails See Rule No. 1

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My Digital Workflow

• Open selected image in Photoshop
• Make a Duplicate and Save As (File Name)This
  becomes our file working file
• Close original File
• Make Adjustments on Layers only, use Adjustment
  LayersHARM NO PIXELS
• NEVER , NEVER WORK ON BACKGROUND LAYER

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My Digital Workflow

• Image Adjustments via Adjustment Layers
• Levels using Adjustment Layer
• Curves using Adjustment Layer
• Color Balance using Adjustment Layer
• Hue/Saturation using Adjustment Layer

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My Digital Workflow

• Make image corrections
• Cloning, Masking, Burning, Dodging on separate
  Layers
• SAVE Often!
• Sharpen image
• Re-size image for output Printing or On-Line
  Competition

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My Digital Darkroom

• Sizing Saving Images for the Web
• Use the Save for Web feature in Photoshop
• Maximum image size 1024 wide x 768 high

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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom

• Lets look at some simple enhancements

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My Digital Darkroom

• Adjust for perspective
• Crop
• Adjust Levels
• Adjust Color Saturation
• Darken or Burn in Edges
• Sharpen

Before
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My Digital Darkroom
The crooked Horizon
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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom
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My Digital Darkroom
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Creating Artwork from Images

• There are a lot of cool filters or Plug-Ins
  available for Photoshop.
• We can create Floods or water, digital skies let
  your imagination run wild

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Creating Artwork from Images

• There is a wide variety of manipulations
  available in Photoshop. However, a method I found
  to be quite effective is called, The Buonarroti
  Carrera MethodCreating Line Art with Color.
• This technique was featured in the December 2004
  issue of Photo Electronic Imaging magazine

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Buonarroti Carrera Method
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Buonarroti Carrera Method

• For step by step instructions of this technique I
  have brought a copy of prepared notes.
• Youre invited to visit my website www.thepixelme
  ister.com

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My Digital Darkroom Other Cool Stuff

• Thank you, you have been a great audience.