To enhance a film photo requires very difficult dark room techniques. Digital CCD images are already on your computer so they are easy to e-mail and share with friends. The detail of black and white CCD images is often better than gas hypered film images. All major observatories, the Hubble telescope, and all of our robotic planetary probes use CCD cameras. When a new image appears on the computer monitor it comes along with unwanted noise that we must subtract out.
Thermal noise creates thousands of white specks in the image.
We cool the CCD to reduce this, and we take a dark frame image with the camera shutter closed. We subtract the dark frame to get rid of thermal noise. There are other types of noise that must be dealt with. To get good images you need to be aware of how to eliminate the various types of noise from the image. Color CCD imaging requires combining three separate red, green and blue images.