Then Peter showed me a small color portfolio that he was using as a sales tool. He and five other photographers at his agency, Network, had shared the price of a scanner and a printer, and were, for the most part, using it to turn out promotional pieces. Without realizing it, they had begun to create a darkroom on a desktop. The first step is buying the equipment. The second, as it is in all darkrooms, is learning to use it well.
Color prints from negatives or transparencies in a conventional darkroom are a pain in the butt.
They take time and care to produce, and are limited in the controls that can be easily exercised. More and more commercial color labs are turning to digital printing because it can rival the quality of a conventional commercial print without much of the hassle. An increasing number of photographers are turning to it because it is cost effective, done at their convenience, and done to their taste. Certain corrections can be made that you can not make easily in a conventional darkroom. Nevertheless, they are amazingly good and getting better all the time.