Darkroom come-back

The mother of printing industry: Darkroom

Less people heard about darkroom nowadays, to print a good picture, they are prefer digital printing shop, photostat shop or Xerox, home used injet printer, photo-enhanced injet printer or others digital output devices. Young generation in the rapid developing IT era claim new definition for printer, whereby in 10 years before “printer” always refer to darkroom operator, offset operator or print-maker in town.

“Using black and white film, photographers could control every step of the photographic process.” (Darkroom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), means that in the darkroom, operator still can do amendment, alteration, improvement on the image quality. Darkroom is a unique entity, specific part of the darkroom to gain variety of effect. “The heart of most darkrooms is the enlarger, an optical apparatus similar to a slide projector that projects the image (usually) of a negative down onto a base. On the base, a sheet of photographic paper, typically either Resin-coated or fibre-based paper, is exposed to the (usually) enlarged image from the negative.” (Darkroom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) Beside enlarger; grade filters, developer, stop bath, fixer and etc. are important to print every single picture.

“…software and techniques used in digital photography that replace the darkroom equivalents, such as enlarging, cropping, burning and dodging, as well as processes that don't have a film equivalent.” Traditional darkroom has been catalyst architectural programmer to develop digital image generation software or some practitioner mention as digital darkroom. Refer to the summaries on Wikipedia.com, Photoshop, recent version CS 2, is the famous and the most powerful imaging software, and won a few times best software of the years from several publications. Adobe brilliantly develop simplified version called Photoshop Elements, and bring up camera manufactures interest to buy the copyright and pair together of their products. Some they are prefer Adobe Bridge that is thumbnails of photographs storage and management digitally. Adobe Camera Raw able to convert any RAW format of market digital cameras into useable format such as jpeg, bmp and etc. for digital printers. (Digital Darkroom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) New Photoshop CS 2 featured with self-made contact sheet in the new feature called automate> Contact Sheet II> and just browse to the file destination and CS 2 will automatically product contact sheet according to user defined.

“Paint Shop Pro (or "PSP") is popular image-editing application that competes with Photoshop as a commercial product. The Gimp is an open-source (and hence, free) image-editing application. It's used less commonly because many photographers find it difficult to operate, although newer versions show improvement here. Capture One is a "workflow tool," and considered by many to be the best RAW converter around. This is a commercial product, and among the more expensive. Other RAW conversion tools include: Bibble, QImage, dcraw, software from the camera manufacturers, and many others; almost all of them are commercial.” (Digital Darkroom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


The invention has made a giant revolution in local photography and printing industry. S&W Digital Photo Sdn Bhd is the first owner of PS 3000 computerized minilab in Penang. (Source: Mr. Song Jin Tek, professional photographer). PS 3000 with a film scanner that able to convert film into digital storage in variety formats, mostly market prefer jpeg, but bmp and tiff can give better resolution and finest pixel. “Common formats for digital camera images are the Joint Photography Experts Group standard (JPEG) and Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)” (Digital Camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) This bring up a new input to graphic industry, especially in Penang, digital camera is very important and become instant imagery producing tools to help in their ideas generation. “An autonomous device, such as a PictBridge printer, operates without need of a computer. The camera connects to the printer, which then downloads and prints its images. Some DVD recorders and television sets can read memory cards too. Several types of flash card readers also have a TV output capability.” (Digital Camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Darkroom is essential for education purposes, and Computer Generation Imagery (CGI) still the convenient method nowadays. CGI make huge contribution in graphic, film-making, web-design, publication, Fine art and even photography itself. Preserve the mother and care the child. This is brief idea from Mr. Song Jin Tek, professional photographer when in mini photography forum, organized by USM Photo Club on the 17 of March 2007.