Photographers Digital Studio: Transferring Your Photos into Pixels
Authors: Joe Farace
Venue:  (1996)

From the Book:This book is designed for those amateur and professional photographers who, having mastered the many and different aspects of conventional photography, would like to explore the brave new world of digital imaging. The Photographer's Digital Studio has been written for people who already know how to create images using conventional photographic equipment and techniques, but may not be familiar with their digital equivalents. For some, moving from silver-based to digital imaging can be intimidating because it involves learning how to use a completely new set of tools. In recent years, there have been major advances in camera technology, but most of these changes have been evolutionary-not revolutionary. Yet photographers easily accepted auto-focus, multi-mode, auto exposure cameras controlled with liquid crystal display panels. Becoming a digital photographer, or pixographer, involves using a computer in ways quite different from balancing your checkbook or playing DOOM. For some shooters this transition will not be a challenge, and for those less familiar with computers, it can be intimidating. It is to this group that this book is dedicated. What is digital imaging anyway? First, it's not something that's totally new Digital imaging is simply an extension of the same kind of camera and darkroom techniques photographers have been using for over a century. The tools may seem different, but they are no more of a radical change than turn-of-the century daguerreotypists encountered when switching to glass plate negatives. Digital imaging is simply a process that converts photographs into their mathematical equivalents in much the same way that conventional photographyconverts silver grains into snapshots. There are totally digital methods for creating photographs and they will be examined briefly, but the book's main focus is on using the same cameras, lenses, and film you already own and using your computer system as an electronic darkroom. That why it's titled The Photographer's Digital Studio. The digital photographs shown in this book, with few exceptions, had their origins as film exposed to light with conventional 35mm single lens reflex cameras. And while some digital images may appear unrealistic, even fantastic in nature, you can use the same techniques to produce images that appear completely natural but are quite different from what you originally saw in your viewfinder. Since creating both kinds of images can be fun, both ways of working with digital imaging will be explored within these covers. Is It Real or Digital? This next statement may come as a surprise: Not all images can be successfully manipulated. just as with conventional silver-based images, almost all digital photographs can be improved by increasing their sharpness, contrast, and cropping, but the better the photograph is, the less you can do with it digitally. Truly great photographs can almost never be improved-digitally or otherwise. Imagine, if you will, manipulating W. Eugene Smith's "Walk to Paradise Garden" or Arnold Newman's "Portrait of Stravinsky." I don't think so. Fortunately, while many of us aspire to the level of these two masters, most of us will never make it. This means that our photographs can be improved and enhanced by digital manipulation. The photographs that benefit the most from digital imaging techniques are those that start out as mundane but, after being digitized and even combined with other, seemingly ordinary snapshots, can be combined into a single dramatic photograph. It is often these less-than-successful photographs that make the transition from boring to striking. The other category of successful digital images are those that were conceived from the very beginning - previsualized - to integrate digital elements to achieve the photographer's vision. Computing for Photographers My goal is to keep all of this information light. I want to make sure this book is easy to read for everyday people, not just technical gurus. I think digital imaging, like photography itself, should be fun. To that end, I'll try to keep the use of buzzwords to a minimum, but acronyms and technical terms are unavoidable, just as they are in any technical description of traditional photographic techniques. Where possible, I'll relate how computers handle digital images to the way a camera works with silver-based ones. A Glossary of Terms is also included. The emphasis of The Photographer's Digital Studio will be on assembling the kind of computer tools a pixographer needs and explaining why you need them. There are many kinds of computers. There are supercomputers made by companies like Cray, used by NASA and the military to perform calculations at speeds so fast they're almost impossible to measure. And there are specialized computers, like models from Silicon Graphics, that create digital effects for movies and TV shows like Babylon 5. But that's not what this book is about. It's about the kind of computers the average photographer can purchase at his or her local Circuit City, Best Buy, or CompUSA store. Consequently, this book will focus on hardware and software solutions available for Macintosh and Windows-based computers. Along the way there will also be plenty of real-world tips and road maps showing ways around the pitfalls that await unsuspecting digital imagers. The Photographer's Digital Studio starts at the beginning and assumes you either already have a computer or are thinking about buying one. I've also assumed that you understand conventional photographic concepts and darkroom techniques but not how computers deal with images. That's why the first part of the book prepares you to understand how silver images become digital ones by comparing your computer to a digital darkroom. Since the requirements for digital imaging are different from word processing, you may need to upgrade your computer system to meet photographic specifications or purchase a new computer to help you properly get started in digital photography or pixography. The rest of the book provides the information you need to assemble a computer system that produces the kind of images you want to create. Part I of this book is called Computers for Photographers. It looks at how digital images are constructed and what concepts and equipment are needed to effectively work with photographs on a computer. If silver grains form the basis upon which conventional photography technology is built, it is pixels, or picture elements, that are the basic building blocks of digital images. To work with hardware that uses pixels instead of silver grains to produce photographs, you'll need to understand the relationship between pixels and computers. Computer systems, like camera systems, are composed of different, complementary parts that function together to achieve a single goal. In the case of your camera system, that objective is the creation of exciting images. Your digital imaging computer has the same goal. This section will introduce photographers to the basics of how computers work with digital images and why certain components are required to create digital photographs. If you're already comfortable with computer basics, feel free to skip this section and start reading Part II. Part II is called image Acquisition. Digital photographers don't shoot photographs, they acquire images, and there are three ways this can be accomplished. Making a photograph with a digital camera may seem like the easiest way to produce a digital image, but there are limitations to this approach. Part II will look at digital and video cameras and compare the ease of use and results obtained from them versus using scanning technology and Kodak's Photo CD process. This Section will also look at the film and print scanners and other equipment needed to convert existing silver-based images into digital form Part III focuses on Image Manipulation and Enhancement. Of all the different aspects of digital imaging, image enhancement has generated the most interest and excitement - probably because that's where most of the fun is. You can use image enhancement and manipulation techniques to improve and change images much as you would accomplish similar effects in a traditional darkroom, but in a digital darkroom you don't have to work in the dark or get your hands wet. And more often than not, achieving dramatic effects is easier to produce digitally than working with paper and chemicals. Part IV covers Output, Image output is one of the least talked about elements, yet it is the final aspect of the digital imaging process. Output can be displayed in many different forms: An image can be viewed on a screen or transferred to other computers in digital form. To print your images directly from your computer, you can use the growing number of inexpensive color printers from companies like Epson, Fargo, and Hewlett-Packard. Another alternative is to output your image to a color laser copier. Images can also be converted back into a silver-based form or, you can reverse the process from digital to analog and have your digital image output as film. Once back into silver-based form, you're free to use this new image to project or make prints in a traditional manner. A Few Final Thoughts I have made every effort to ensure I covered the most useful photo-related hardware and software products currently available, but there may be several reasons why your favorites may not appear. It may be too new. If the last generation of personal computing belonged to the desktop publishers, the next one belongs to digital photographers. This trend has caused a tsunami of imaging products for Macintosh and Windows computers. With new products and new versions of products being announced daily, it's possible I could have missed one or two brand new products. I may not have heard of it. For the reasons just stated, keeping track of new products can become overwhelming, and I might easily overlook a few. if I missed one of your favorites, I'm sorry and will try to include it in the next edition. It may be too expensive. It's my intention that all the products that appear inside these pages will be affordable for the amateur, aspiring professional, and working pro on a budget. While some space will be given to digital cameras that cost over $10,000, their inclusion is more by way of a comparison to converting analog images into digital form. The manufacturer or publisher may not want to cooperate. It's been my experience that computer companies are much like the people you meet every day; some of them will go out of their way to help you, and others won't give you time of day. Fortunately, there are plenty of heroes too, and they'll be mentioned in the appropriate sections. One Last Thing Photography is an uneasy alliance of science and art, and photographers sometimes become more interested in the technology than the images. This pursuit can translate itself into the search for perfect optics or chemistry to produce "the ultimate image." Unfortunately, the kind of "absolute truths" present in conventional photography are not so straightforward in digital imaging. Digital imaging has changed more in the last five years than photography has changed in the past 150. The best product or technique to accomplish a photographic effect today may be obsolete tomorrow. I ask only that you not be frustrated by this uncertainty but instead look at the digital imaging process as a journey of exploration, learning new things every day. The products mentioned in these pages represent those that I have worked with on a daily basis, but what I'm using one day may be different the next. For that reason any products mentioned represent what Joe Farace uses and in no way is considered an endorsement by Addison-Wesley, Peachpit Press, or LightSpeed Publishing. Product shots were provided by the manufacturers but most of the original photographs and all of the screen shots were made by me and are copyrighted. Some photographs, however, were from Corel's library of stock images on Photo CD. When Corel images from are use, the disc is identified in the body test or photo caption.