[synergy99]

Hello my name is AJ and i am switching to digital for the first time from flim. I am a advance Am. in Film but not in digital, and i have a few questions. First i have just bought a K100 and i am very impressed with this camera. The question i have is what is a good Digital dark room/ photoshop for the K100d. I have been looking around but i just thought this would be the best way to get an answer. I am mainly looking for basic dark room techniques ie dogging and burning ect. Thank you

[little laker]

Welcome to Pentax Forums, and the dark room of Digital Photography AJ,

There are so many choices out there. Some free and some will almost break the bank.

I use GIMP for some of my work, and it's free.
If your working in RAW you'll also want UFRaw for it.

My main program is ACDSEE Pro, and sorry it's not free. But I highly recommend it.

[Ash]

Hi Synergy,

Can't help you with the budget/free PP programs, but if you want an opinion of Photoshop - I'm sure you'll find many people agreeing it's a fantastic program - if you can justify the cost.

I did try the Pentax Photo Lab 3 software that came with my K100D and must admit it too was quite useful. But since I've already got PS CS2, I've defaulted to using that. My workflow is fast and effective with it.

[rvannatta]

Hello my name is AJ and i am switching to digital for the first time from flim. I am a advance Am. in Film but not in digital, and i have a few questions. First i have just bought a K100 and i am very impressed with this camera. The question i have is what is a good Digital dark room/ photoshop for the K100d. I have been looking around but i just thought this would be the best way to get an answer. I am mainly looking for basic dark room techniques ie dogging and burning ect. Thank you

I simply use photoshop elements.

One thing I've found is that it's really a good thing to take the photo 'right' in the first place.
I don't mean to sound snotty, but something that you can't do with a film camera is to know how the end result is going to be--- so you have to save it any way you can.

However with the digital you can instantly look at the results, and often do a 'retake' if the exposure doesn't suit you. --- a 'retake' is often quicker than salvaging one after the fact.
It's pretty easy to bias the exposure meter, or put it in a spot meter mode etc., and if you do as much of the 'getting it right' as possible with the camera, life will be better.

With film we can't see what the results will be, and extra shots and bracketing and dthe like all burns film and costs money. with digital, cranking a button on the camera and taking another shot doesn't cost anything. There is a major 'relearning' process here. After years
of 'not wasting film' it takes a real effort to push the button often and frequently. the bits on your memory card can be recycled, so why not use them and recycle them.

Likewise, if there are lighting issues, don't be backwards about running up the ISO.
camera shake and depth of field and focus problems can't be fixed and are a lot more destructive to a decent photo than some noise.

[Cloudy Wizzard]

I am mainly looking for basic dark room techniques ie dogging and burning ect. Thank you

Wel most and probably all programs already mentioned are probably very good at the job.

However the only ones that I know are The Gimp and Photoshop (Lightroom).

I used the Gimp on Linux a few times but since I'm not experienced with Photoshop or Photoshop-like software it was to hard for me to use. At least do more then some basic stuff like adding text.

Offcourse this will go for EVERY program you install if you are new to it.

At the moment I'm using Photoshop Lightroom, It's designed to do just what you want. Stuff like White Balance, color adjustments, exposure, contrast, ...

but not the more advanced stuff you can do with PSE or CS3.

I've been reading a review by someone from Kelby Training I think (I think the article is one one of the NAPP sites) and they claim that Lightroom is a very good tool for this. And faster then Photoshop at some points (you can also easily sync your adjustments like WB correction so you don't have to do that for every shot, offcourse the lighting needs to be the same for all photo's. But ideal for studio work).

Anyways,

you can have a look in the Post Processing section here, there are a lot of other software discussions.

My personal advise would be to just download a few of the trial versions and see which one fits your needs/budget best.

Lightroom is about $300
PSE6 is less then $100 and CS3 is around $800 I think.
The Gimp and UFRaw are GPL so FREE software

There is also Corel Paintshop Pro X2 Photo (or something like that) and Ulead Photo Impact 11 or 12 (bought by Corel recently I think).

these also offer a FREE trial version and so does ACDSEE.

My personal favorite is Lightroom, but that's probably just because I had no background and followed an online tutorial on Lightroom so I didn't have to figure out much of it.

And for more advanced retouching I've got PSE6 because I "had" to buy PSE for another Photography course I'm taking. But at the moment it's more like a Photoshop Elements course then a Photography course).

Good Luck with your search.

[Duck Dodgers]

And don't forget Picasa:

Picasa

Also free, and recognizes PEF files.

[synergy99]

Thank you for all the replays they were all helpful. I know that with digital i can have retakes and that i can see my photo and your not sounding snotty haha but im a landscape photographer and i like to make burn and some of my photos are dramtic. I will have to download some of the free sampled. Do all of these work for the K100d because i noticed that DXO Pro does not support the K100

[synergy99]

Oh i forgot to add that i also shoot in Black and White

[rvannatta]

Thank you for all the replays they were all helpful. I know that with digital i can have retakes and that i can see my photo and your not sounding snotty haha but im a landscape photographer and i like to make burn and some of my photos are dramtic. I will have to download some of the free sampled. Do all of these work for the K100d because i noticed that DXO Pro does not support the K100

Many of these things can be done on thte computer easily but much differently than in a dark room. Contrast adjustment, tweeks to the highlights, shadows, or midtones, and a host of other things let you get there. I started out my experience in photography in a dark room.
Indeed operated a dark room BEFORE I ever owned a camera as I was making plates for an offset press using 11x14 sheet film which I developed in traditional red, white, and blue open trays. My point is simply that there is a lot of relearning to do.

[jfdavis58]

What is your output; i.e. where: web, prints, for print,...?


The statement about shooting in B&W is interesting--with a K100?

Hello my name is AJ and i am switching to digital for the first time from flim. I am a advance Am. in Film but not in digital, and i have a few questions. First i have just bought a K100 and i am very impressed with this camera. The question i have is what is a good Digital dark room/ photoshop for the K100d. I have been looking around but i just thought this would be the best way to get an answer. I am mainly looking for basic dark room techniques ie dogging and burning ect. Thank you

[UnknownVT]

Oh i forgot to add that i also shoot in Black and White

What is your output; i.e. where: web, prints, for print,...?
The statement about shooting in B&W is interesting--with a K100?

Using the K100D for b&w puts an entirely different perspective on this.

I used to do almost exclusively 35mm film b&w photography (a long time ago) -
processed my own film and did all my own darkroom work and printing. I used a (spot) printing meter to get the light/shadow distribution - and used the Ansel Adams/Minor White Zone System to dodge and burn-in print areas, and even did multi-exposures on print (not negative).

Based on that old experience -
The most important features for b&w landscapes would probably be
brightness and contrast,
sharpening (USM - UnSharp Mask),
cloning tool (healing brush)
and a very good "lasso" selection tool (with magnetic/magic options) -
possibly Layers manipulation......
- and almost all editors will have those (they are so very basic, except perhaps layers) -
- some perhaps may be more sophisticated -
but it is probably not worth paying hundreds of dollars more.

This means one can start with a very cheap or even FREE software - try it and see.

I would recommend PhotoShop Elements - the current version is 6.0 - but almost any older version after 2.0 is going to be good
- eg: using PriceGrabber.com I can see PS Elements 4.0 in non-retail box OEM at $17 - this is stupidly cheap - it does not come with the printed manual -
so buy the "PS Elements 4.0 for Dummies" book as the manual.
This way you will have PhotoShop compatible software and project files for the future.

A slight wrinkle/variation -
obviously one can shoot b&w directly on the K100D -
but also consider shooting in color - but use the editor to convert the shot into greyscale -
that way a single shot can be both color and b&w -
experiment and take both b&w and color - use the greyscale conversion, and see if they are of the same quality

some scans of my old b&w film photos -

[Aux]

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS3 + Adobe Camera Raw CS3 for image processing and Adobe Lightroom CS3 for catalogue/viewer needs. Simply the best solution for windows/mac, but very costly.

[jfdavis58]

Hi AJ,

I'm not sure if you are coming back to this thread/site or not; three quick posts one morning, containing a fairly interesting situation, then nothing...

Well, nothing from you! A lot of blather from many others; some mildly amusing.

If I understand you correctly, you shoot with a K100D, use the in camera digital filter to make the image B&W then output the result somewhere/somehow. You claim some familiarity with analog B&W and appear to be looking for a digital darkroom analogous to the analog darkroom.

Before I make any sort of recommendation, let's settle on your needs: is the situation I outlined correct? Where/what will you be outputting?

[Rafael]

Personaly I can't justify the cost of Photoshop and use PaintShop PRO from Corel and it works good enough for me and cost me very few $$$. I got version X online for US$20.