alternatives to photoshop

[Don Wallace]

I posted on this to photo.net but would like to see what folks here have to say. Is there an alternative to Adobe Photoshop? It seems to me that this thing was made for graphic artists and not photographers. One still has to pay (and handsomely) for the extra tools one will never use. I also find it really tedious to learn and somewhat arcane. I want to scan, do some very minor editing (colour correction, cropping, maybe some dodging and burning). I print with the computer mainly just to evaluate whether or not I want to send it out for a larger, serious print. Also, I only scan colour. I do b&w in the darkroom.

I am also thinking of getting a Mac Mini and using it exclusively as a colour darkroom (i.e., not connecting at all to the net). Any experiences, suggestions, or advice on all of this?

[Oren Grad]

Don - in a recent issue of Photo Techniques, Ctein had a very favorable review of Picture Window Pro, which costs only $90 but is still a very powerful and versatile program. You can also download a 30-day evaluation version for free. It's only offered in a Windows version, though. There's more info at the website of the company that makes it:

www.dl-c.com/ (http://www.dl-c.com/)

[Alan Davenport]

Both Picture Window Pro and the Gimp get good reviews. Another option for much less money, is Paint Shop Pro, or at least it was when it was produced by Jasc. I haven't seen PSP since Corel absorbed Jasc.

[Steven Barall]

Hello, Photoshop Elements 3 is almost like regular Photoshop but for about $90.

[Ted Harris]

Don,

I understand your frustration but am not sure that I agree that it was made for graphic artists not photographers. Granted there are tools that are more useful for graphic artists than for photographers but by and large there are many many tools that can be very useful for photographers but their use is not necessarily evident and the learning curve for the program is steep and sometimes seems endless. Adobe's program tailored specifically for graphic artists is Illustrator.

I can echo what Oren has said, I have also heard good things about Picture Window Pro although I have no experience with it. As for The Gimp, I think you will find it as frustrating as Photoshop, perhaps more so.

Final comment, cost aside, Photoshop is an extraordinarily robust program and the more you use it and the more you master some of the more obscure tools the more you will like it. I don't find it any more frustrating or full of features that I seldom use than other higher end software. How many of the available tools in Excel or even Word do most of us use? For that matter do you remember how frustrating and difficult it was to learn the counterintuitive commands in Wordperfect?

Cheers

[paulr]

I have never never seen an image editing program that can come close to photoshop, especially for photography. Without its rich layers and channels functions, and full 16 bit editing, I wouldn't be able get results that are nearly as good. I also find its interface to be the best and most streamlined of any complex program that I've used. Of all my software, I use photoshop the most and scream at it the least. No more than a couple of times a day.

[paulr]

I should mention that the book Real World Photoshop CS is the best book of its type I've ever seen. I used photoshop for 10 years as a designer and print production specialist, but when I started using photoshop for serious photography, I had to send myself back to school. This book was all the schooling I needed.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321245784/qid=1126021537/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4392748-1953662?v=glance&s=books

[Christopher Perez]

Here's a second vote for the Gimp.

Load it on top of Linux and you'd have a networkable rock solid stable system that is immune to virus attacks.

[Kirk Gittings]

You can use a little of the tools in PS or allot of them, but it is all there when you need it and want to use it. There are other programs out there but they are simply not in the same league as PS. It is an absolutely indespensable tool for the serious photographer who does digital capture or output.

[Joakim Ahnfelt]

Since the fabulous Color Studio died in the mid 90s (Any one remember Color Studio? Years ahead of Photo Shop at it's time.) I've used Photoshop exlusivly. It has all that you need and a lot you don't. The problem is you have to buy the whole package to get the things that you need. IMHO I find that every other program that is tailored for one specific use lacks one or more really usefull feature. You get what you pay for I guess.
I'm writing this post on my Mac Mini. 1,24 GHz and 1GB RAM. I've used it for retouch work on files up to 350/400 mb. Saving is a bit slow but i'm usually in no hurry when I working at home. The trick is to work smart and don't have a lot of other things running. Mind you I've worked on files the same size on an old power Mac 8500 until 6 months ago. (Saving took about 10 minutes.)
At work I use a PowerMac G5 2.3GHz but the difference in acceptable if you consider the difference in prize.

[Charles Forde]

A program called made by Binuscan called Photoretouch pro, it has a very useful function called bX-ray which can reveal invisble image faults in scans such as CCD stops, Newton Rings, JPEG compression artefacts, etc.
www.binuscan.com (http://www.binuscan.com)

[QT Luong]

I've read there is a newcomer called something like Acrylic. It comes from Microsoft, but given that's it is available for free, it might be worth a try if you have time on your hands. In my opinion, this time would be more productively invested in reading a PS book.

[QT Luong]

One of the main advocates of PWP is Norman Koren, by the way. Check
http://normankoren.com/PWP_intro.html
I've seen Norman's prints, and they are superb. He says that in general he spends only 1/4 to 1/2 hour per print, which speaks volumes about the efficiency of a PWP workflow.

[David E. Rose]

Corel Photo-Paint is another alternative. I often use it for cloning because I find that tool easier to use than in Photoshop. Overall the program is very similar to Photoshop, but costs substantially less. You can try a free download from the Corel website.

[David Luttmann]

Acrylic is a poor substitute for PS. GIMP is OK, however if you want LAB, CMYK, or support for large scans....GIMP isn't for you. GIMP is terribly slow on large MF scans that I do while PS rocks on through them without a problem.

I'm afraid that if you are serious about control in a digital darkroom, you'll need the power and versatility that PS offers.

[Keith S. Walklet]

The previous posts seem to have the list of options covered. As for the learning curve with PS, I second the Real World Photoshop books. To learn PS and many other graphics applications inexpensively, you might check into the lynda.com on-line learning center's list of titles. $25 buys a month's unlimited access to all their tutorials. Learn at your own pace. Then for expert instruction you can invest in a workshop.

[Mike Lewis]

I second the vote for Picture Window Pro. I have been using Photoshop on a G4 Mac and I agree that the program seems to be overkill for photography and tedious to learn. Also, I simply hate the Mac (yeah, you read that right). PWP seems to be enough for photography, and to my surprise and delight it seems to run fine on a Linux box using the Wine emulator. As for the GIMP, it works pretty well but the current version won't do 16-bit/channel color (PWP will) so it's not ready for serious photo editing yet. There is a fork of GIMP called Cinepaint that will do up to 32-bit/channel color (very interesting) but it is currently "alpha" software and crashes easily with large files. It's not ready for prime time.

[paulr]

"I agree that the program seems to be overkill for photography and tedious to learn."

I depend on quite a few photoshop-only features in order to get photographs to look as good as possible. And I'm not talking about special effects; I'm talking about tools that allow you to do the basics while destroying as little image integrity as possible. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's because you haven't learned the advanced photoshop techniques requrired to do this. Once you learn them, there will be no going back to anything else.

[John_4185]

This Photoshop thing leaves me Cold! I am a Photoshop wizard, and I've no friggin use for it outside the Day Job, and that job is all about brute-function. Have you PS people no expertise, no lives?

[Eric Fredine]

I also think that Photoshop is a remarkably good piece of software - though the learning curve is not trivial and never-ending. I futz endlessly with my prints, so I can't imagine using any tool that couldn't support all my adjustments in adjustment layers (or something equivalent) where I can endlessly change my mind without degrading image quality. I think this is especially true when you want to start 'dodging and burning' (and I do this with masks on adjustment layers rather than something as primitive as the dodge and burn tools that work directly on the pixels).

When I consider the amount of $$ I have invested in the various tools I use (cameras, lenses, computers, software) and the amount of time I spend using them and the value I derive from them, I'm always pretty happy with the Photoshop equation.

If I was cranking out images for something like stock photography, then I might want to opt for something simpler and faster. But in that case I probably wouldn't bother with the time, expense and additional hassle of LF either!

[Kirk Gittings]

Picture Window Pro.....I'd say that any program made by Digital Light and Color is worth taking a close look at. They make some of the most effective PS Plugins that I have found, especially Color Mechanic Pro, an indespensable tool for architectural photographers who need to work in mixed lighting situations.

[julian_4860]

Chris, with the gimp on linux... hope do you profile the monitor or use ICC profiles..?? I've been holding off migrating to linux cos i couldn't find an answer...

[Ed Richards]

PWP was written by a photographer and using photography (darkroom) metaphors. You do not have layers, you have masks. You can apply color filters that match photographic filters. It has had full 16 bit processing since day 1, until photoshop which only got it recently. It is small and loads fast. Until CS and CS2 it had a lot more photo tools than photoshop - lens correction, perspective correction, etc. Now that photoshop has copied those the advantages are not as great. If you have darkroom experience, it is much faster to learn and use. I have used it for years and despite using Photoshop CS2, I still go back to PWP very often - it is terrific for color correction. It really depends on how much time you want to spend on the computer. If you want to emulate the darkroom experience, PWP cannot be beat. If you want to indivudally tweak each tree in the landscape and add a little artificial texture to the bark, photoshop is a better bet. You can do good work in PWP within hours of starting with it, it takes weeks to months to get any decent results out of photoshop. You do not get all the plugins and toys, some of which are very good, you do with photoshop, but hey, you could buy lenses instead with the money you save!

Check out Norm's tutorials, they really show what you can do. The better the negative, the less you need photoshop, and the bigger the format, the less you need a zillion tools to sharpen and tweak your image to make your pictures look like they are sharp and have a good tonal range. I think Ctein is right - even a photoshop user should have a copy of PWP for some things, and it costs less than some plugins. OTOH, the new healing tools in CS2 are hard to beat when there is crap on the negative or powerlines across your vista.:-) I thought I would switch to CS2 but as I use it more, I think PWP is better for most of what I do, but somethings like healing are much better in CS2.

[Al Seyle]

Don's orig post was regarding a Mac program. GIMP and PWP are PC only are they not?

[David Luttmann]

GIMP was originally Linux only. It is now available on many platforms. PWP is Windows only.

[Charles Forde]

Photoretouch Pro is a Mac program. Here are the Tutorial movies for the program.

www.binuscan.com/us/prp/tutorial/chapters.html (http://www.binuscan.com/us/prp/tutorial/chapters.html)

[paulr]

"You do not have layers, you have masks"

Which aren't interchangeable. Photoshop has masks too (either quickmasks or channel masks). Layers provide whole other ranges of possibilities. And not just for artificial effects, which don't interest me at all ... i'm talking about basic image work, like tonal and color adjustments and sharpening, which intelligent use of layers can give incredible control over without any destructive editing.

[Bosaiya]

Photoshop is to photo software what a view camera is to photo hardware.

There's really nothing out there that comes even close to Photoshop. I've been using it steadily since 2.0 and I've tried many of the other products that have come out before and since. The learning curve isn't steep if you stick to the areas you need and ignore the areas you don't. Don't blame the tool for being too powerful. How steep is the price, really In other words how much is it worth to get the image exactly how you want it? If you could buy a new piece of camera gear, let's say a specialty lens, that would give you exactly what you needed for the shot but took some time to learn, how much trouble would you have justifying the purchase? I'm not saying that to be snide, please don't take it as such, just purely from an economics standpoint. Would a new $600 specialty lens that gave you exactly what you, your client or your patron needed be worth it vs. something that was cheaper but didn't have the full potential to get it exactly right? Figure out the equation and you've got the answer. That's always been how I approach these things. No one else can figure it out for you.

If you want a point-and-shoot in either department, they are out there and the results are what you would expect. If you want to get the most out of your photos, you need to be willing to make an investment in time. Corel makes a number of products, Paint Shop Pro is out there, GiMP is another. I've used them and always gone back. Then again, your software needs may be very modest and in that case you need but throw a rock.

[Ed Richards]

PWP uses a different paradigm - you get a series of new images, rather than saving everything in one image. My problem with layers is that on a huge LF file, the layers soon make the file too large to use in the Windows memory space.

[Keith S. Walklet]

Ed,

You might want to look into the Layer Transfer technique I described in this thread:

largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/501003.html

The process makes it possible to work with more layers with limited memory.

[Kirk Gittings]

Keith,

Maybe I missed something, but that is a very vague description to refer to. I am very interested in this. can you explain it in more detail?

[paulr]

"PWP uses a different paradigm - you get a series of new images, rather than saving everything in one image. My problem with layers is that on a huge LF file, the layers soon make the file too large to use in the Windows memory space."

I don't understand how you could get the kinds of interactions between the images in the separate files that you can get out of layers in photoshop. Photoshop allows you to have image layers with diferent blend options (so, for example, you can confine sharpening to the midtones, so you don't increase grain or shadow noise or blow any pixels to white or black), you can have multiple adjustment layers (for non destructive tonal or color adjustments), and you can create other interactive layers (like a mask for all your buning and dodging). They have to be in the same file in order to interact and produce the final image.

I use a 6 year old mac that has a 400 mhz g3 processor. My image files routinely grow to 800MB (base file plus an adjustment layer, plus a sharpening layer, plus an burn and dodge layer). The little computer can handle it, slowly. At least OSX lets me send email and waste time here while the little machine is chugging away in the background. To speed things up when I'm working out all the adjustments, I save a copy of the file and res it down (from 720 ppi to 90 ppi). I can do all my tonal adjustments and local adjustments on this small file (it may grow to 30 or 40 MB if I have a ton of channel masks) and make small work prints (up to 4 on a letter size sheet of paper) to check progress. When done, I copy the adjustment layers and burn/dodge layers over to the high res file, and all the adjustments are instantly transfered.

It's a perfectly workable system, and allows you to handle pretty big files even on an underpowered machine. Not sure how you'd do something similar without adjustment layers and burn/dodge layers.

[Ed Richards]

You can do the same thing with masks by working sequentially on the image, saving the intermediate images if you want to backtrack - but it is more tedious and you have to be good at record keeping.

Your technique is intriguing - can you tell us a little more - if you do a burn/dodge or selective sharpen masking layer for a defined area, can this be copied to a different rez file and match up? Do you have to do them as vectors? What about when you use tools like PK sharpener?

[Keith S. Walklet]

Sorry Kirk,

I remember posting this description of the Layer Transfer Technique here before, but it seems to have evaporated.

Here it is again. Basically, this technique lets one take advantage of the fact that layer masks are generalizations. You make a small copy of the file, work on it, add all the layers, then when it looks good, apply all those adjustments to the full size file.

The Layer Transfer Short Version

I watched my friend working on his G5 with full-size 16 bit images as quickly as my machine operates with 8 bit. I simply wouldn't be able to work with large files if I didn't use the Layer Transfer Technique. Since most of the heavy lifting Photoshop does is with all the calculations with layers, etc. this technique advocates downsampling the original scan to a smaller base file (~50 mb) and when things look right, transferring all the layers back into the high resolution file. It is only in the final steps, upsampling, copying and pasting the data, when things slow down.

If you're not familiar, this is my variation of the process as passed along by Rich Sieling of West Coast Imaging. They use the process in their workflow:

A. Spot, crop and save your scan as something like "ABCD_spotted_scan.psd". (Rich does this last, but I do it first, preferring not to have a dirty image to look at, and figuring I will at least crop to working dimensions that eliminate extraneous data).

B. Prepare the LT File:
1. Open the spotted file, downsample to 8x10 at 360 dpi (check constrain proportions and change dpi to 360, and the long side to 10 and let the computer calculate the short side)
2. Save as a discreet file called something like "ABCD_8x10_LT_UF.psd"
3. Start adding your layers and adjustments to that file. Once you've got the file looking the way you like it, save it in unflatted form.

C. Prepping for the "Layer Transfer":
1. Open "ABCD_spotted_scan" and resize it roughly to your target output size --again with proportions constrained--set the dpi to the intended output resolution. (I use 360 since I run an Epson 9600) and the long side to your intended dimensions (say 20 inches) and let the computer calculate the short side. For the sake of this example, for film with an aspect ratio of 4x5 you'd end up with dimensions of 7200 pixels (20 inches) on the long side by something in the neighborhood of 5850 pixels (16 inches) on the short side.
2. Make note of what the exact size of the second dimension is in pixels (write it down because you'll need it in a moment).
3. Select all and EDIT>COPY

D. Upsample the "ABCD_8x10_LT_UF.psd" file:
1. Activate the "ABCD_8x10_LT_UF.psd" file and upsample--with proportions constrained--to the same size as you made the spotted file, matching the dpi and long side. Let the computer calculate the short side. If you're lucky, it will end up calculating the same number as in step C-1 (5850). Sometimes it is a couple of pixels off.
4. If the dimensions match exactly, proceed to step 6. If they don't (due to rounding errors), go to step 5.
5. Uncheck constrain proportions, physically enter the proper short side dimension from step C-1 and press enter to finalize the resize.
6. Select the background layer and EDIT>PASTE the copied information from the spotted file into your upsampled LT file.
7. Zoom in to actual pixel level and either click the eyeball on and off (or adust the opacity up and down) for this new layer to make sure the data from the high res spotted file lines up exactly with the low res data from the LT file.
8. If the data lines up properly, discard the background layer and you have an unflattened high resolution file that you can either save, or flatten and sharpen for output.

[Kirk Gittings]

Thanks for that. This is not a big issue for me as I have big computers, but you may have made the day of my assistant who is working at home on a dinosaur!

[Keith S. Walklet]

Glad to be of assistance. I would already have caved in and gotten a G5 by now, if not for this. Working with the full 48 bit files, things have gotten a little cumbersome.

[Bosaiya]

Keith, do you actually honestly see a difference on your prints in those larger bit-depths? Where is the difference most present? I ask because for the life of me I can't find them in my prints, but I realize that a more discerning eye may in theirs.

[paulr]

Keith, I'm not sure I completely follow what you're doing, but it sounds conceptually similar to my workflow. I don't have to do any math for mine, so there must be some technical differences.

The discovery that made it all work for me (thanks to some advice i got online) is burning and dodging on a layer. If you create a layer filled with 50% gray and set the blend mode to soft light, it will be invisible. but any part of it that is darker than 50% will darken the underlying image, and any part that is lighter will lighten the underlying image. So i make masks for every area I want to adjust, and use them to make selections, but apply the lightening and darkening to the burn/dodge layer. It can be done, undone, redone, tweaked, etc. as much as you want, without touching the underlying pixels. and that layer can be copied to your hi rez file and scaled up to fit. works flawlessly.

Only a couple of limitations: the soft light blend mode gives you a very limited range of adjustment, especially in the highlights. so on rare ocasions I've had to stack a second burn/dodge layer, and sometimes use the overlay blend mode for that one (much stronger, but harder to keep natural looking).

Also, this gives you no local contrast adjustment. I almost never need to do this (the equivalent of burning with color filters with vc paper). but if you do, then you have to use more complicated means, like making an adjustment layer for a specific, masked off area. this works great, but is a much bigger memory and processor hog.

[Keith S. Walklet]

The most obvious difference I see is in the smoothness of continuous tone areas (sky, water) where I used to encounter banding on some of the early files I worked on. Since Photoshop is all about capitalizing on the difference between one pixel and the next, the more subtle those differences are (more data), the better results I seem to achieve.

There is a great illustration in Real World Photoshop that compares the impact of major changes to an 8-bit and a 16-bit files. The 16 bit files fare much better.

When I teach this approach, I call it the "biggest bucket" method. As in, when your mom sends you to the well to get a gallon of water, better to take a two gallon bucket because you'll otherwise spill some on the way home. So, I retain the maximum data I can through the editing process. In the past year, especially, I feel the quality of my prints have improved exponentially, part due to improved skills and part to better data.

[Paul Butzi]

Also, this gives you no local contrast adjustment. I almost never need to do this (the equivalent of burning with color filters with vc paper). but if you do, then you have to use more complicated means, like making an adjustment layer for a specific, masked off area. this works great, but is a much bigger memory and processor hog.

I routinely do this. My usual technique is to decide which area of the image I want to adjust. I create a new curves layer, fiddle the curve until I get the effect I want in the area (or areas) I'm interested in.

This results in an image where the part(s) I'm adjusting looks right but everything else has been messed up.

Now I attach a mask to the new curve layer, fill it with black. The image is back to the way it was before. Now I just select white, pick a brush size, set the flow rate to something like 5%, and paint the contrast change onto the image by painting white into the mask.

Yes, it's more memory and processor intensive. But, oh, I love it. It lets you dodge or burn just a limited part of the tonal range, for instance.

[Bosaiya]

Thanks Keith, I tend to subscribe to that believe myself. A printing service I was using was not able to open 16-bit files correctly (they all got corrupted by the FTP transfer for some reason) and it got me thinking about the necessity of the larger bit-depths. I looked and looked but didn't notice any differences on prints I did at home, but then my prints do not contain much sky and water so that may be it. Thanks for sharing that!

[Keith S. Walklet]

Paulr,

Precisely! The advantage to this approach, and any that uses adjustment layers, is that you can really finesse the changes. Not only can you paint with various shades of gray on your layer mask, but you can adjust the overall opacity of that layer.

Since you are familiar with the soft light layer adjustment (one of Charlie Cramer's favorite approaches), you should also try some of the other layer modes to achieve different effect. Those include: Screen (which is like using two slide projectors, ie. lighter), Luminosity (which only affects the lightness and darkness, without messing with the color), Multiply (which can add density to thin areas). The curves you use with these other layer modes will look a little different, but by manipulating them, you should get a feel for what they are doing. It is also possible to use them in combination with each other on duplicates of the mask.

[Ed Richards]

Just to make sure I understand, you can uprez a file with layers and the layers scale up? This is how you match the smaller working file with the larger master file?

[Keith S. Walklet]

Bingo!

You scan an image. Save the spotted scan. Resize it to 8x10. Make all your adjustments to the smaller file using layers. Save the 8x10 LT version as a discreet file.

Now you have the ingredients for a layer transfer.

Upsize the 8x10 LT file to the desired dimensions. Open the spotted scan and upsize it to the same dimensions, exactly. Copy the upsized spotted scan and paste it just above the background layer in the 8x10 LT file. Delete the background layer. Flatten. Sharpen. Save the resulting file as a third discreet file.

That way, you still have the spotted scan, the 8x10 LT with all the layers, and the resulting file of larger dimensions.

No reason to do a transfer unless the target file will be bigger than the 8x10, since there would be no resolution gain in the print.

[Ed Richards]

Supposedly there is an option for resize (maybe in CS2) that allows you to use a file as template for the resize dimensions to make the new file exactly the same as the template.

[John_4185]

Ed Richards: Supposedly there is an option for resize (maybe in CS2) that allows you to use a file as template for the resize dimensions to make the new file exactly the same as the template.

??? No need. There's been File-Automate-Fit Image for many versions.
--
jj - "Use a computer as a very last resort."

[Keith S. Walklet]

Good to know, I suppose, though the task of matching the dimensions only requires as much time as it takes to write down the pixel values for height and width in the upsized 8x10 LT file so that you can enter them in the "Image Size" dimension boxes of the upsized spotted scan.

[Ed Richards]

Is there any way to do selective sharpening and blurring as layers so you can smooth the sky and tune up the rocks before you do the final sharpening for printing?

[Keith S. Walklet]

Absolutely. Flatten the file, duplicate the background layer. Sharpen with your weapon of choice, USM, Edges Only, etc. Then, under LAYER> NEW LAYER MASK either choose HIDE ALL or REVEAL ALL, depending on whether you want to paint out the sharpened areas, or paint them in. You can also adjust the opacity of this layer to fine tune the overall sharpening.

[Ed Richards]

Can you do this multiple times, or do you need to flatten each time and start over?

[Keith S. Walklet]

Ed, I'm not sure I understand your question. Do what multiple times?

[John_4185]

Alternative to Photoshop?

May I suggest the ultimate alternative: DO IT RIGHT IN THE CAMERA!

Computers - fugedaboudit!

[Ed Richards]

> Ed, I'm not sure I understand your question. Do what multiple times?

Sorry about that - I meant different sharpening parameters for different parts of the image. Would I need to flatten between each application of sharpening?

> May I suggest the ultimate alternative: DO IT RIGHT IN THE CAMERA!

I would if I could, but I have not yet figured out how to apply different processing times and grain structures to regions of the same negative.:-)

[David Luttmann]

How do you dodge and burn "in camera"?

[Tom Westbrook]

Just wave a card around in fromt of the lens. It presupposes a fairly long exposure, but that's not too hard with LF.

[Keith S. Walklet]

Ed, yes you can do it multiple times, though you will probably find it easier to keep the sharpening limited to one layer and mask, and vary the effect of the mask by painting with different shades from white to black rather than making multiple sharpening layers. Since the effect of layers is cumulative, it might get confusing. In Real World, they recommend duplicating the background, oversharpening it, creating a layer mask, hide all, and then painting with white at an opacity of about 10% to carefully erase the mask and reveal the sharpening. Depending on how much you need to sharpen and the intracacy of what it is you are sharpening, you can choose to make the layer mask a "hide all" or "reveal all" where instead, one paints with black to hide the effects of the sharpening.

And in regard to the "in camera" dodging and burning, I limit mine to half neutral density filters which I suspect is a bit more precise than waving a card around, though the latter method is handy on hot days or when the mosquitoes are so thick they show up on your film. ;-)

[Tom Westbrook]

I should have mentioned that John Sexton goes into the card waving thing in his workshops. He uses the markings on the outside of lens to remember how to limit card movement, having checked coverage beforehand on the GG.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

How do you dodge and burn "in camera"?

Aside from processing controls, you can also "mask" with a UV filter and a grease pencil if you have a high contrast range. This easier if you do it with a LF camera, but I have done it with 35 mm also.

[John_4185]

It is truly heartening that people reacted to my "do it in the camera" in a good-spirited and constructive way. Thank you.

I am no digital-dummy. In fact, a huge part of my day job involves digital imaging. However - and I am not kidding - sometimes I can dodge and burn and print better in the wet darkroom than sitting on my butt in front of a monitor. Now I am not talking about being more 'precise', but making pictures that fit the wet, "hand waving" process, and very nicely. Given enough time, I could explain it better; suffice to say there is a fitting of the hand method that works with my previsualization and practice. Do people disrepect sculpturers who don't CAD/CAM for the same? No, because some digital methods cannot reflect 'the hand' that fits the work better. I believe most people underestimate, or are blind to, how the 'advanced' technology they adopt constrains the work they attempt.

[Keith S. Walklet]

It shouldn't be a surprise that John has figured out an effective way to manage it in camera. What markings on the lens are your referring to? I have a hard enough time guestimating whether my hat or hand is in the frame when quickly improvising a lens shade. (The Flare Buster has solved this problem).

And the grease pencil idea seems like it would work wonders for irregular horizons where the standard straight edge of a 1/2 ND creates as many problems as it solves. Though, it would make working on multiple compositions quickly interesting.

[David Luttmann]

I like the card waving idea. While only useful for long exposures, I can see that working for some of the water shots that I do along with interiors work. While nowhere near as accurate as computer control, it should be fun to give it a try on a high contrast scene to see what I get.

Thanks.

[Ed Richards]

Do not forget those tiny rotary fans they once used in place of center filters.:-)

If you could get a 4x5 piece of that glass they use to make auto adjusting sun glasses, you could stick it in front of the film holder, expose it a while, then pull the dark slide and get a perfect contrast mask.

I have nothing against darkroom work, I just do not have the space to set up a dark room to make big prints, nor the time to work for the stretches necessary to make good prints. With photoshop I can work on an image when I get some time, then put it down again. If time and space were not an issue, I would work in silver. I do not see digital as better in general, but for me it is better than not doing large format printing at all.

[John_4185]

Ed: I do not see digital as better in general, but for me it is better than not doing large format printing at all.

Most excellent point. And you will always have those good LF negatives should you one day want to do the wet thing, or come across an affordable, high-quality LF scanner.