'Noise Ninja' and the cold cathode 'look' in B/W

[Bobbo]

During my search for info about scanning 4X5's I came across this item which concerns the visual character of B/W prints made from scans.

To summarise;....most serious photographers will know only too well the distinct difference, between conventional prints made with either condensor or cold-cathode enlarging systems. This item outlines a method of apparently synthesizing the smoother graduation of tones/texture in a cold-cathode print using facilities found in 'Noise Ninja',.....which I understand, is a 'plug-in' for the hated 'photoshop' (which I personally, hope to avoid!)

If you have already seen this then I apologize,.....otherwise it's worth a look.

http://dougplummer.blogs.com/dispatches ... the_l.html

[Joanna Carter]

... which I understand, is a 'plug-in' for the hated 'photoshop' (which I personally, hope to avoid!)

If you intend to scan negs or trannies, then I really don't see how you are going to avoid Photoshop. And why is it hated ? Most people who do digital capture of film are eternally grateful for Photoshop because it allows you to emulate all sorts of wet darkroom techniques.

I, personally, do not use all the "fancy stuff" that allows you to distort and "manipulate" images, preferring to use it mainly as a digital darkroom. It is nigh on impossible to scan an image and just print it, there are just too many things that need doing betwixt scanner and printer.

1. You will need to remove dust spots, hairs, etc.

2. The tonal range of the neg may need altering to get it to print as expected. I have just printed an image that was taken in a flat light of around 3 stops range. to get that to print as anything other than just muddy grey, I had to apply several different tone curves, some partially masked to prevent "overcooking" some areas whilst getting other areas just right. This is just like emulating split-grade printing in the wet darkroom.

3. All scans, especially those from a flatbed scanner, require sharpening and is something that varies from scan to scan. This is not something that can be done at the time of scanning, it should be done after all other adjustments have been made.

If you intend to achieve your aim of finding the "modern position with 4x5", then you need to consider several things.

Do you intend to stick with the traditional wet darkroom ?

If one intends to move to a digital darkroom, one has to pay serious consideration to how one intends to do all the normal wet darkroom things. e.g. there is no way you can respot an image after printing, you have to use a software tool.

Photoshop really is the "bee's knees" of digital darkroom software. Yes, I know people do some horrible things with it; our photographic society's digital group seem intent on distorting any image that they take !! But it is not a prerequisite of using Photoshop that you have to be a budding photographic Salvadore Dali

However, add-ins like Noise Ninja, Genuine Fractals, etc are not strictly necessary; Photoshop is capable of doing most of these things, it just takes a lot more expertise and time to get the same results.

[Bobbo]

Hi Joanna,...thank you for your helpful reply.

Yes. I am aware of all the subtlties of photoshop

Unfortunately, I have been away from the industry for too long. If someone such as myself, ie., a photographer rather than a computer 'geek', was able to start with the early versions then there is hope for successful use of the more recent editions. However, my exploits started with P/S 6 (and also the rcent 'CS' to a lesser degree) and it has easily become my most disliked application. It is true that patience is NOT one of my better failings, but then again, I use some very advanced software while wearing some of my other hats and have at least gained some practical skills enough to get by. Photoshop has by contrast, been more or less a complete failure and I have come to believe that the shortfall is probably due to both my late arrival and the very poor design of Adobe products in general.

A rough count (about 2 years back) showed up nearly 150 books and manuals all claiming to hold the secrets of Photoshop mastery,....far more than for most other software packages,...so presumably I am far from alone. Some of the 10 or so of these that I attempted to wade thru' bore little apparent similarity to the actual program,...none of them were sufficient to give me any real working grasp!.... Perhaps one needs to be versed in some allegorical art which Adobe chooses to hide inside it's own enigmas...(?)

I have recently been introduced to 'Picture Window' by a friend,...this appears to be a no less serious but far better (not to mention vastly less expensive ) alternative to P/S, and I am reliably informed that there are others and soon to be more,...so all is not lost for us 'Photoshop Refusniks'

[Lee Turner]

Whilst PS can be incredibly confusing, as there are several ways to do the same thing, it is the industry standard. I've been using it since 1995 and the one thing that they've always stuck to in the upgrades is familiarity. Unlike other applications the old tools are in the same place and do the same thing. For graphics professionals this entails very little in the way of retraining, if indeed any, when a new version is released. Think back to Windows 3.11 or Mac OS7 and compare it to XP and OSX. Completely different interfaces and functionality. Go back to PS4 and compare it to CS. You'll be able to find the common tools/functions within seconds.

I only use PS for colour work as all my B&W is still printed in the darkroom but at work use PS regularly. If you find PS too much then have a look at Elements. It has a lot of the PS features but with a much easier interface.

[Bobbo]

Hi Lee,...interesting post,

Yes, Photoshop is often defended as being the "industry standard"....as if this somehow excuses it's lack of cohesive design! All I can say is that it's a poor industry with that sort of 'standard'..... Hopefully for not too much longer.

An aquaintance is a long term P/S user as part of his work in the printing industry and started with the very first P/S package and has graduated to the latest which he now uses working entirely from home very successfully. He is a very nice bloke but, without wishing to be unkind to him, NOT exactly the sharpest knife in the draw! It's VERY irritating to me that he has such a mastery over the enigmas and I have not been able to get to any worthwhile ability despite considerable application!

[Lee Turner]

That's the point of Photoshop. My late Father in Law started off as an apprentice in the print industry way before PS. Once the industry started to adopt DTP and computerised graphics manipulation the same guys who'd been working on presses and plates had to be trained up. The last thing you needed to do with these guys is have to retrain every year so the consistency from version to version made PS the de facto package. It's the same with Quark. I find it an unwieldy piece of software compared to something like Indesign but the print and graphics industry has been running it for years so there it stays.

Have you tried using a graphics package with a tablet (not an aspirin) and pen such as the ones from Wacom? It takes a bit of getting used to but for graphics/photo editing I wouldn't go back to a mouse.

[Joanna Carter]

Bobbo, please don't think I am trying to cajole you into using Photoshop, but I am surprised that you would have such strong feelings against it. On the other hand, I would agree that there are too many books out there, all of which are attemting to teach people how to use Photoshop. I don't feel that this is because it is a hard product to learn, but more because there are so many uses to which you can put it, possibly also because it is a big market and publishers can smell an easy buck.

I also have looked at several books but then I stumbled across one on Photoshop for photographers by Martin Evening. Now this is a totally different thing from a lot of these arty-farty uses that so many books concentrate on. Most books seem to concentrate on processing/manipulating digital camera images (yeeugh!) and this seems to be where the biggest market for books is found; such books have very little to offer "proper" photographers

Mind you, even though I can use more tools, I tend to find, for B&W work, that I only really use about half a dozen, all of which are available in Photoshop Elements :

Curves (with masks)
Crop
Resize
Magic healing
Clone stamp
...plus the Genuine Fractals plugin

Since I have got about three copies of Elements free with various scanners and printers, if I had not had the opportunity to get CS2 via a cheap upgrade route, it needn't have cost me a penny

However, getting to know how to use those tools for the best effect has taken time and effort; as I guess it will also do with any tool. In fact, I think that getting to know the tool is merely the beginning of wisdom, then comes the real learning

[Bobbo]

Hi Joanna,

".....I think that getting to know the tool is merely the beginning of wisdom, then comes the real learning ..."

Not only quite profound but very true!

A good friend from my youth who was a press photographer and is now a picture editor, swears by 'P/S Elements' for his own personal work so perhaps I will ask him some serious questions about it....

Just out of interest, what was/is the title of the Martin Evening book?

Lee,....that's interesting, I have often wondered about the Wacom tablets/light pens etc.

[Lee Turner]

The good thing about the Wacom is that it's pressure sensitive so any tool in PS (or other packages) that has a pressure/exposure setting can be exploited just by pressing harder with the pen. If you turn it over you can use it as an eraser, just like a pencil, or program the history brush for quickly undoing.

I also find the ergonomics better than a mouse when spending a couple of hours working on images.

[Joanna Carter]

Just out of interest, what was/is the title of the Martin Evening book?

Would you believe "Adobe Photoshop for Photographers" Published by Focal Press, ISBN 0-240-51942-6.

I would also heartily endorse Lee's suggestion of a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse; I don't know how I ever managed without it

[Richard Kelham]

I, personally, do not use all the "fancy stuff" that allows you to distort and "manipulate" images, preferring to use it mainly as a digital darkroom.

Hi Joanna

It is precisely those twitsgeeks who misuse PS and all the 'fancy stuff" that make me dislike it too. Well, that and the price. javascript:emoticon('')

I quite agree that it is an essential, and powerful, tool for any digital output process, alas, so i accept it as something we have to live with. Doesn't make me like it any more though...


Richard

[Lee Turner]

One other thing that made (and still makes) PS a standard is it's colour space and profiles. Most of the hobby packages would only work in RGB whilst the print shops usually required CMYK separation.

It also simplifies the use of calibrated profiles from the scanner, screen and printer therefore ensuring that what you scan is what you see, and what you see is what's printed. I have profiles for most of the commercial printers such as the Fuji Frontier and can pretty much guarantee that what's on my screen is what the minilab Fuji processor will produce.

As Joanna and Richard have mentioned you only need to use a few of the tools with the main ones being levels, curves, crop and unsharp mask. A lot of the features in PS7 and onwards have been aimed at web development and digital capture although the healing brush is a stroke of genius.

Anyway, back to calibrating the Dichro head on my old De Vere 504.

[Bobbo]

The Wacom stuff has joined my list of items to research,....it's getting to be a long list!

I am reliably informed that 'Picture Window' which was designed with landscape photography particularly in mind, can cope with "48 bit" colour whearas few other image editors can do this,....P/S only laterly. Can 'P/S Elements' do this?

".........back to calibrating the Dichro head on my old De Vere 504..."

Blimey!....i thought it was just me liking/using the technology of 25 years ago!

[Joanna Carter]

Blimey!....i thought it was just me liking/using the technology of 25 years ago!

If I had the room, I would also love to have a wet darkroom. A few years ago, I was given (for free) a Besseler 5x4 enlarger with Ilfospeed Multigrade head, etc, etc.

After a couple of years of having it in the garage waiting to find the room for it, I gave it all to a photographic charity. The, then, administrator turned out to be a bit of a crook and took the lot along with all sorts of other assets/donations and did a runner

[Lee Turner]

Blimey!....i thought it was just me liking/using the technology of 25 years ago!

I've been working in the IT industry for 23 years now so anything that gets me away from computers is a bonus. I also love working with fibre based paper for b&w and the selection for wet work is still quite big.