Dedicated to photographers, artists, and educators who are seeking clear, concise, insightful, and inspiring information and techniques on how to make your photographs shine. Based on the concepts of the traditional darkroom, The Creative Digital Darkroom encompasses a tutorial approach that translates traditional skills, concepts, and nomenclature into contemporary digital solutions using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Lightroom. Shying away from quick tips and gratuitous effects, this book concentrates on the most important tools and techniques for creating effective images that express your true vision.

Table of Contents

Dedications
Introduction and Acknowledgments
Foreword by Stephen Johnson

Section 1: The Essentials
Lays the foundation for the entire book as we explain our creative thought process, equipment considerations, and presents an overview of our digital darkroom workflow.

Chapter 1: Silver to Silicon

• Overview of what the Digital Darkroom is and why we find it so inspiring
• Seeing Images
• The Digital Darkroom
  • Explains the difference between making a LOT of images look very, very good versus making a few images perfect.
  • The Master Image File
  • Workflow Overview                                 
    • File Preparation                                               
    • Global Enhancement                                                                              
    • Selective Enhancement       
    • Creative Enhancement
    • Printing                                                           

 Chapter 2: Digital Nuts and Bolts

• Overview of the digital darkroom hardware and software
• The working environment
• Computer Platform
  • Apple
  • PC
• Monitors
  • LCD or CRT
  • Calibration
• Wacom Tablet
• Image Input
  • Film or Digital Capture?
  • Our respect and use of film before digital capture came into its own.
  • Scanners
  • Our love and passion for digital capture
  • Digital cameras
• Printers
• Essential Photoshop Preferences and Color Settings

Chapter 3: Scan, Develop, and Organize

• Starting with Film
• Resolution & Scanning
• Starting with a Digital Camera
  • Digital Photography for Photoshop
• File Formats
• Exposure & Histograms
• File organization with Bridge and Lightroom
  • Import
  • Naming
  • Ranking & Rating
  • Keywords
  • Converting to DNG
• Developing Raw files with Adobe Camera Raw
• ‘What to do in ACR and Lightroom’ versus what to do in Photoshop or the pixel editing software of choice

Chapter 4: File Preparation

• Remove Noise
  • Defines types and causes
    • Luminance
    • Chrominance
  • How to avoid noise to begin with
  • Photoshop techniques to remove noise
  • Third party applications
• Capture Sharpening
  • The sharpening workflow
  • Photoshop techniques
  • 3rd party applications
• Spotting
  • Now or at the end?
  • Efficient clean-up navigation
  • Spot Healing Brush and Patch tool
• Correcting Optical Distortion and Perspective
• Cropping

Section 2: The Black & White Darkroom
Many of you remember your first darkroom experience, as you watched a print appear in the developer tray – the impact, the magic and mystery of this moment, cannot be underestimated. This section honors this memory and reveals the techniques of enhancing tone, exposure, contrast by applying global and selective contrast, lighting (dodging), and darkening (burning) techniques. The black and white image is still considered the penultimate photographic art form, and this section shows the reader how to take an average exposure and make it gallery ready.

Chapter 5: Tone and Contrast

• The Digital Zone System
• The Advantages of Adjustment Layers
  • Working non-destructively
• Global Image Improvement
  • Working with Levels
  • Understanding Curves
  • Digital Contrast Filters
• Converting Color to BW
• Toning BW
  • Cold and warm toning
  • Mono and split toning with adjustment layers
  • Combining color with BW

Chapter 6: Dodging, Burning, and Exposure Control 

• Dodging Techniques
• Lightening for emphasis and interpretation
• Burning Techniques
  • Local and edge burning
• Adjustment Layers
  • Blending Modes
  • Overview of Layer Masking
• Neutral and Color Fill Layers
• Contrast and Exposure Control
  • Shadow/Highlight
  • Contrast masking
  • Blend If
  • Gradient Masks
  • Fill flash
  • Controlling Dynamic Range
• Adding Depth with Digital Lighting

Section 3: The Color Darkroom
Photography is more than a pigmented black and white image – color is how we see and feel the world. From a muted sunrise to the dynamic energy of exotic location photography, color speaks to the viewer on a deeper emotional level than a simple RGB value can convey. This section takes the mystery out of color correction and shows you how to accentuate the color emotion in your images.

Chapter 7: Color Correction

• What is Color?
• Light = Physics
• Object = Chemistry
• Observer = Biology and Psychology
• The Subjectivity of Color
• Global Color Correction
• Neutral Color
• Working with Levels
  • Color Correction by the Numbers
• The Power of Curves
• Enhancing Color
  • Hue/Saturation
  • Photo Filter
• Local Color Correction
• Changing Color
• The power of LAB
• Color Range
• Match, Replace, and Selective Color

Chapter 8: Creative Color Effects 

• Color Interpretation
• Mimicking color effects filters to warm and cool a scene
• ACR
  • Experimenting with Color Temperature
  • Combining interpretations via Smart Objects
• Color toning and tinting
• Cross Processing Techniques

Section 4: Creative Techniques and Printing
As photographers, we do much more than record a scene, rather – we take great efforts to interpret, accentuate, and express our unique point of view. Similar to how a musician improvises, the original exposure is the score and the Photoshop techniques revealed in this section are the jazz riff photographers use to transform a photograph from a straight-forward rendering to your personal creation.

Chapter 9: Creative Enhancements 

• Creative Optical Effects
• Black & white infrared
• Diffusion effects
• Darkroom Special Effects
• Solarization
• Reticulation
• Image Texture
• Adding personal image significance with textures
• The Distressed Image
  • Fading and Cracking
• Creative Edge Effects
  • Simple stroke
  • Filed out negative carrier

Chapter 10: Enhancing Focus 

• Removing Distractions
• Improving Backgrounds
• Sharpening Techniques
  • When to Sharpen
  • Working with Photoshop sharpening filters
    • USM
    • Smart Sharpen
    • Highpass
  • Sharpening with Finesse
    • Sharpening with layers and masks
    • Luminance sharpening
    • Tonal sharpening
    • Edge Sharpening
• Softening for image emphasis
  • Lens Blur
  • Depth of Field Effects
  • Smart Blur
• The importance of noise

Online Chapter: Print Making

• It’s All About the Print!
• Preparing to Print
  • Resizing
    • When to Resize
    • How to Resize
      • The Image Size dialog
      • Interpolation Choices
      • Resizing in ACR
    • Final Sharpening
  • Inkjet Printing
    • Profiles
      • Canned profiles
        • Downloading profiles
        • Installing profiles
      • Custom profiles
      • Convert/Assign to profile
        • When and why?
    • Soft-proofing
    • Print with Preview
  • Printing BW
    • Inks, media, and RIPS
  • Continuous Tone
    • Large format photographic prints
    • Durst Lambda
    • Lightjet

Online Table of Content and Index