Digital darkroom

Last updated June 28, 2024

Digital "darkroom" is the hardware, software and techniques used in digital photography that replace the darkroom equivalents, such as enlarging, cropping, dodging and burning, as well as processes that do not have a film equivalent.

All photographs benefit from being developed. With film this could be done at the print lab, or an inexpensive home darkroom. With digital, many cameras are set up to do basic photo enhancement (contrast, color saturation) immediately after a picture is exposed, and to deliver a finished product. Higher end cameras, however, tend to give a flatter, more neutral image that has more data but less "pop," and needs to be developed in the digital darkroom.

Setting up a film darkroom was primarily an issue of gathering the right chemicals and lighting; a digital darkroom consists of a powerful computer, a high-quality monitor setup (dual monitors are often used) and software. A printer is optional; many photographers still send their images to a professional lab for better results and, in some cases, a better price.

While each implementation is unique, most share several traits: an image editing workstation as the cornerstone, often a database-driven digital asset management system like Media Pro 1 to manage the collection as a whole, a RAW conversion tool like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or Capture One, and in many cases the software that came with the camera is used as an automated tool to "upload" photos to the computer. The machine itself is almost always outfitted with as much RAM as possible and a large storage subsystem - big hard drives. RAID and external USB and FireWire drives are popular for storage. Most photographers consider a DVD-burner essential for making long term backups, and keep at least one set off-site.

The term was coined by Gerard Holzmann of Bell Labs for a book entitled Beyond Photography: The Digital Darkroom, in which he describes his pico image manipulation language (not to be confused with the pico programming language).^[1]

Software

The software employed in a digital darkroom varies greatly depending on the photographer's needs, budget and skill. The following are general areas and examples of software.

Image Acquisition: entails downloading images from a camera or removable storage device or importing from a scanner. Windows XP and Windows Vista both include an inbuilt wizard for importing images, including scanning images. Many professionals however may choose an importation tool built into image management software such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture, ACDSee, Capture One, or darktable.

Image Library Management: involves managing images in a photographer's library and may extend to backing up images. Software such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture and Media Pro 1 are examples of major image management software.

RAW Software: software, either stand alone or as part of image library management software that is designed to import and process RAW images. Most digital cameras capable of outputting RAW images will include a program or plug-in for this purpose such as Canon RAW Image Converter. Commercial Programs such as Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, Apple Aperture and Capture One, as well as open source projects such as darktable and RawTherapee, include extensive support for RAW importation and processing.

Image Editing: There are countless image editing suites, programs and tools available. Adobe Photoshop is among the most highly used in professional circles as are programs from Apple Inc., Microsoft, Macromedia (now Adobe), ACD, Phase One and various open source projects. Consumers may use professional software or choose less expensive options such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, Capture One Express or free open source options such as The GIMP.

Camera Control Software: software that can remotely control a camera from a computer connected via USB (tethered shooting). Normally included as utilities with camera, these allow photographers to control the camera from a nearby computer. Cameras such as the Canon 40D include such software and a live view mode so that a user may use a computer to control numerous functions of the camera while seeing a virtual viewfinder onscreen.

Capture One is one of the pioneer software programs used for tethered shooting which is very useful especially for studio photographers.

Capture Pilot^[2] is a photography app with camera control. The photographer is able to use a virtual camera display on an iPhone or iPad to remotely fire the camera and control capture parameters such as ISO sensitivity, exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation. Capture Pilot requires Capture One to function.

Hardware

As image size and resolution increases, so do the requirements for hardware in a digital darkroom.

Computer: A computer in a digital darkroom typically have a generous amount of RAM, often 4GB or more, coupled with discrete graphics and a powerful multicore processor. For much of the 1980s and 90s, Macintosh based systems were dominant in the digital imaging market as Adobe's powerful new Photoshop software had only then been developed for the Mac. However, Windows-based systems such as Dell's high-end Precision range have become increasingly popular in recent times; better value for money than Apple's high-end Mac Pro and a more familiar Operating System are both factors that affect the choice of many prospective buyers of photo-editing systems.

Cameras/Scanners: Digital cameras and image scanners are increasing in quality, including the amount of colour they can capture and output. Many newer digital cameras can support wider colour spaces such as Adobe RGB and have higher resolution analog-to-digital converters; 14 bits rather than the common 12 bits.

Displays: Professionals may use premium displays from companies such as EIZO and Dell which are capable of displaying a wider range of colours than consumer oriented devices.

Printers: In addition to computers and displays, digital darkrooms may include printing equipment, ranging from smaller size printers for proofing to large format productions printers. Scanner and studio photographic equipment may also be included.

Digimage Arts program

Digital Darkroom is also the trademarked name of an image editing program for the Macintosh published by Digimage Arts.^[3]

Related Research Articles

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing. Owing to its fame, the program's name has become genericised as a verb although Adobe disapproves of such use.

iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Mac computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally sold as part of the iLife suite of digital media management applications, iPhoto is able to import, organize, edit, print and share digital photos.

An image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting or an object and converts it to a digital image. Commonly used in offices are variations of the desktop flatbed scanner where the document is placed on a glass window for scanning. Hand-held scanners, where the device is moved by hand, have evolved from text scanning "wands" to 3D scanners used for industrial design, reverse engineering, test and measurement, orthotics, gaming and other applications. Mechanically driven scanners that move the document are typically used for large-format documents, where a flatbed design would be impractical.

Aperture is a discontinued professional image organizer and editor developed by Apple between 2005 and 2015 for the Mac, as a professional alternative to iPhoto.

A camera raw image file contains unprocessed or minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, a motion picture film scanner, or other image scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed, and contain large amounts of potentially redundant data. Normally, the image is processed by a raw converter, in a wide-gamut internal color space where precise adjustments can be made before conversion to a viewable file format such as JPEG or PNG for storage, printing, or further manipulation. There are dozens of raw formats in use by different manufacturers of digital image capture equipment.

QFX is an image editing computer program developed by Ron Scott, a Texan photographer and software engineer. The first version was released in 1990. At the time of its release, QFX was one of the most feature-rich image editing applications available on the PC platform. It was the software of choice for digital artists and image postproduction studios in the times when 1024x768 truecolor graphics were a luxury, far before Photoshop could have been considered a serious professional tool. Its clean interface and clever workflow helped build a devoted user base, some of whom continue using it, despite QFXs being long ago eclipsed in features and users by Photoshop.

Adobe Lightroom is an image organization and image processing software developed by Adobe as part of the Creative Cloud subscription family. It is supported on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and tvOS. Its primary uses include importing, saving, viewing, organizing, tagging, editing, and sharing large numbers of digital images. Lightroom's editing functions include white balance, presence, tone, tone curve, HSL, color grading, detail, lens corrections, and calibration manipulation, as well as transformation, spot removal, red eye correction, graduated filters, radial filters, and adjustment brushing. The name of the software is based on darkrooms used for processing light-sensitive photographic materials.

Perspective control is a procedure for composing or editing photographs to better conform with the commonly accepted distortions in constructed perspective. The control would:

DxO Labs is a privately owned photography software company. It was founded in 2003 by Jérôme Ménière, former CEO of Vision-IQ. The company's headquarters are in Paris, France.

Leaf is an Israeli company that manufactures high-end digital backs for medium format and large format cameras. It was previously a division of Scitex and later Kodak, and is now a subsidiary of Phase One. In 1991, Leaf introduced the first medium format digital camera back, the Leaf DCB1, nicknamed ‘The Brick’, which had a resolution of 4 million pixels. As of 2012, Leaf produces the Credo line of digital camera backs, ranging from 40 to 80 megapixels. Until 2010, Leaf also produced photography workflow software Leaf Capture.

Bibble is a digital imaging program for multiple platforms by Bibble Labs, designed to assist photographers in post-production work and efficient optimization of images created in raw image formats. After Bibble was acquired by Corel, it was rebranded as Corel AfterShot Pro.

SilverFast is the name of a family of software for image scanning and processing, including photos, documents and slides, developed by LaserSoft Imaging.

In digital photography, the Camera Image File Format (CIFF) file format is a raw image format designed by Canon, and also used as a container format to store metadata in APP0 of JPEG images. Its specification was released on February 12, 1997.

Mikkel Aaland is a Norwegian-American photographer, based in San Francisco and Norway. He is known for work in the early days of digital photography, as well as his twelve books on photography. He is best known for his 1978 book Sweat, an illustrated history of sweat bathing. His documentary photographs have been exhibited in major institutions around the world, including the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the former Lenin Museum in Prague. Aaland is the author of works of memoir, books featuring his own photojournalism as well as works on digital imaging and various Adobe Photoshop products.

Darktable is a free and open-source photography application and raw developer. Rather than being a raster graphics editor like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, it comprises a subset of image editing operations specifically aimed at non-destructive raw image post-production. It is primarily focused on improving a photographer's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images. It is freely available in versions tailored for most major Linux distributions, macOS, Solaris and Windows and is released under the GPL-3.0-or-later.

Capture NX is a photo editing computer program developed by Nik Software in partnership with Nikon for macOS and Microsoft Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noiseless</span> Image noise reduction application

Noiseless is an image noise reduction application by Macphun Software. The application is designed to reduce the noise found in digital photographs. The noise is often a result of snapping pictures in low light environments.

Affinity Photo is a raster graphics editor developed by Serif Ltd. for iOS, macOS, and Windows, alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher. Development of Affinity Photo started in 2009 as a raster graphics editor for macOS. Its first version reached general availability in 2015 with the Windows version launched a year later. It is a successor to PhotoPlus which Serif discontinued in 2017.

Aurora HDR is a photographic software developed by Skylum Software for both Mac OS X and Windows. Aurora HDR is designed to be a multi-functional and user-friendly post-production HDR photo editing software.

The Nik Collection is a suite of photo editing plugins intended for use with a host application, such as Adobe Lightroom, Affinity Photo or DxO PhotoLab.

References

↑ "Beyond Photography - The Digital Darkroom". spinroot.com. Retrieved 2024-06-27.
↑ "Review Capture Pilot v1.2 With Camera Control". Nikonians. Retrieved 2024-06-27.
↑ Color It! 4.5 for Mac OS X Archived 2013-09-07 at the Wayback Machine

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "Beyond Photography - The Digital Darkroom". spinroot.com. Retrieved 2024-06-27.

[2] "Review Capture Pilot v1.2 With Camera Control". Nikonians. Retrieved 2024-06-27.

[3] Color It! 4.5 for Mac OS X Archived 2013-09-07 at the Wayback Machine

[1]

[2]

[3]