Is digital photography a left-brain pursuit? — part 7

Having figured out from the proofed images which ones I wanted to print, here’s what I is to do (toward the end, I have elided a great deal of the detail so as to minimize boredom – both mine and yours):

• Turn on the safe light; let it warm up while doing the following.
• Dilute the developer with 68° water. Pour into the tray.
• Mix the stop bath and the fixer with 68° water. Pour into the trays, one for stop bath, and two for fixer.
• Fill a fifth tray with 68° water.
• Fill the sink with 68° water.
• Put the negative in the carrier, put the carrier in the enlarger.
• Put the right lens onto the enlarger.
• Set the timer to “focus”.
• Load a filter pack for the paper grade desired.
• Pick an f-stop and set the aperture.
• Move the enlarger to get the right coverage for the paper and cropping.
• Adjust the easel.
• Focus.
• Turn off the enlarger.
• Turn out the bright lights.
• Take the paper out of the paper safe and put it in the easel.
• Using a piece of cardboard as a mask, make a series of five test strips of 5 through 25 seconds.
• Develop and stop the paper.
• When it’s in the fixer, turn on the bright lights.
• Transfer the print to the water bath, then put it up on a piece of plastic arranged about 20° off vertical in the sink, lit with a light that simulates gallery viewing conditions. After viewing, transfer it back to the water bath.
• Find the exposure that gives the right white. Check the blacks at that exposure. If they’re fine, the paper grade is right. If they’re too black, the paper grade is too hard. If they’re too gray, the paper grade is too soft.
• Make more test strips, adjusting the paper grade and the exposure time until you have the right grade and close to the right basic exposure.
• Make a full print at the basic exposure. That’s the basic straight print.
• Make more prints at slightly different exposure until you have one that’s just a hair light. That’s your adjusted basic exposure.
• Critically examine the basic exposure print, and decide if it needs local controls – it almost always does.
• Decide which of these controls can be accomplished by dodging and burning at the same paper grade as the basic exposure, and make a series of test strips of areas to be dodged and burned at greater or less than the basic exposure. Write the exposure on the back of each print.
• Decide which of these controls can be accomplished by burning at a different paper grade than the basic exposure, and make a series of test strips of areas to be burned with various filter packs and various exposures. Right the filter pack and the exposure on the back of each print.
• Overlay the test strips on top of the basic exposure on the wet basic exposure print arranged against the nearly vertical plastic. Since the test strips are wet, they will stick to the basic exposure print. Swap test strips of various exposures and, if necessary, filter packs in and out until you achieve the look you want, or as close to it as you can get.
• If it’s the look I want, feel the test strips off the basic print and look at the numbers on the back to formulate the dodging and burning plan. Remember that, although you can burn as long as you want, you can only dodge for the basic exposure.
• Make a sketch in the darkroom notebook of the dodging and burning plan.
• Make a print according to the basic exposure which I figured out before and the dodging and burning plan.
• Examine that print and decide if it looks fine or not – usually the answer is not.
• Annotate the dodging and burning plan with changes that will move the print in the right direction, then implement that plan and develop a new test print.
• When I’ve got the test print as good as it’s going to be, ask myself if that’s good enough.
• If the answer is yes, wash the test print for about 10 minutes, and then dry it in the microwave to see if it gets too dark. If it does, adjust the exposure times for the test print and try again.
• If I think that selenium toning might significantly lower some of the values, tone the test print, dry in the microwave, and evaluate the midtones. If they’re off, adjust exposure times for the test print and try again.
• Make six or eight final prints, process them archivally, (including toning) and, while they’re washing, clean up the darkroom and dump the chemicals.
• If the test print wasn’t good enough, ask myself if local bleaching might improve things. If the answer is yes, perform some experiments to see what dilution and how much bleaching will do the job.
• If bleaching doesn’t look like it will do what I need, ask myself if I need to do a contrast reduction mask. Actually, if I need the contrast reduction mask, it would probably have been obvious early in the cycle, but I may have been trying to get away with taking the easier path. Contrast reduction masks are beyond the scope of this discussion.
• If I need local sharpening, prepare the appropriate masks, and use them. Sharpening masks are beyond the scope of this discussion.
• Put the washed prints on fiberglass window screens, turn off all the lights, and get some rest.
• The next day, spot the prints. Details of the spotting process are beyond the scope of this discussion.

To do the equivalent operations digitally, I perform the following steps:

• Open Lightroom.
• Select an image.
• Click on Develop.
• Crop the image with the cropping tool.
• Click on “B&W” to convert the image to black and white.
• Adjust black-and-white mixing sliders by eye.
• Adjust the exposure slider by eye.
• If any whites are blown out, adjust the recovery slider.
• If the blacks need help, adjust either the blacks slider or pull down the dark end of the tone curve.
• (If we were talking about color images, I would adjust the white point during the above three steps.)
• Now I’m looking at the equivalent of the basic straight print.
• If I need more detail in the dark areas, adjust the fill light slider. To do the equivalent of this operation with chemical processing would require a contrast reduction mask.
• Decide if light from controls will be adequate for this image, or if I will need to use Photoshop.
• If Lightroom controls alone are adequate, decide what local controls are necessary, and perform them using the adjustment brush and/or the graduated filter.
• Spot the picture using the spot removal tool.
• Use the clarity tool judiciously.
• If Lightroom controls alone are not adequate, right-click on the image, and select “edit in Photoshop”.
• In Photoshop, add as many adjustment layers as necessary. Control which areas of the picture they affect by painting on the layer mask with a brush, or using the gradient tool. Advanced Photoshop techniques are beyond the scope of this discussion.
• Save the image in Photoshop, and close the program.
• Back in Lightroom, go to the print module, and set it up for proofing (same paper as I’ll be using for the final print, but smaller size).
• Pick the right amount of output sharpening.
• Set the print resolution to the native resolution of the printer.
• Make the test print.
• If the test print is not perfect, go back to the development module and make corrections.
• Once the test print is perfect, go to the print module and make a full-size print.
• If the full-size print looks good, make as many as I need. There’s no need to make extras, as in chemical photography, because it will be easy to duplicate the full-size print at any later time.

Comparison and analysis? In the next post…