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Chapter 15 Digital Darkroom Basics
• A toolbox displaying the available tools
• A workspace or editing area where the image
is displayed
• Image displayed for editing
• One or more palettes used for specific
displays (such as color choices or brush sizes)
Working in the Digital
Darkroom
As noted earlier, many photographers who
are making the transition to digital imaging
consider digital darkroom activities to be
equivalent to traditional printmaking processes.
In the descriptions of techniques that follow, the
tools, commands, and screen representations are
from Adobe Photoshop. Although they may differ
in name or appearance, the corresponding tools
and commands of other image editing programs
accomplish similar results.
Creating a Working Copy
Careful photographers always preserve an
original image file (think of it as the “digital
negative”) without changes. They create a
working file, or duplicate file, for processing. This
allows them, if need be, to go back to the original
and make a fresh copy at any time.
Preparing a working copy often will involve
a change of file type. If the original image file
is a compressed JPEG (.jpg) file, the duplicate
should be changed to a Tagged Image File Format
(.tif) or the native Photoshop file format (.psd).
As described in an earlier chapter, .jpg files
are lossy—they lose quality each time they are
opened and resaved. The .tif and .psd file types
are not lossy. Both also support the use of layers,
an important image processing feature that will
be covered later in this chapter.
RAW conversion
RAW is a file type, but not a file format like
.jpg or .tif. Essentially, a RAW file is unprocessed
image information: the camera’s processor does
not make any adjustments to the image (as it
does for .jpg files). Many digital photographers
prefer to shoot RAW because it allows them more
precise control of their images.
Photoshop and other image editing programs
cannot work directly on RAW files. These files
must be changed to a file format (usually .tif or
.psd) that the program can handle. This is done
with a RAW converter, software that allows the
photographer to make a number of adjustments
to the file data before saving the image as a .tif or
.psd file. Photoshop and most other full-featured
image processing programs include a RAW
converter; camera manufacturers typically bundle
Figure 15-5. The basic parts of an image editing program screen. A—Menu bar.
B—Options bar (tool specific). C—Toolbox. D—Workspace or editing area.
E—Palettes for specific displays. F—Displayed image.
A
F
B
C
D
E