My Digital Darkroom Equipment and Process this page is not complete yet

Epson 1280The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 inkjet printer has stunning 2,880 x 720 dpi resolution and a quick-drying six-color ink palette that does produce large photo prints in crisp detail and true tonal quality. I have been totally pleased with this printer. Impressive features that provide borderless photo prints in sizes up to 13 by 44 inches. I print on Epson's photo paper. I have tested with other media, but the best results are with the Epson brand. I use only Epson 1280 ink and with their media the prints should last 15 to 25 years. Understanding the printer drivers is a must. There is a ton of information about the drivers on the Internet. However, the new printer now use pigment inks for archival image printouts that will last up to 108 years. So I will be putting mine on ebay soon because I am need of one of these new pigmented ink printers.

Photoshop CS2 I use Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium Photoshop as my photo editor though most new version of any image editor works fine. I found Photoshop to have the steepest learning curve. Photoshop is fun to play with and there is a lot of help and tutorials on the Internet.

 Caution: there are a ton of Photoshop product sales scams on the internet. My best advice is if it sounds to good to be true yada yada
My basic work flow I will be adding to this over time.

  • I shoot in raw mode for my best pictures and high jpg for all other.

  • I import and convert the raw files to tiff adjusting contrast and saturation in Photoshop. Sometimes I may adjust exposure, temperature and brightness if needed. I then save the files as tiff

  • Then still in Photoshop with the jpg or tif file I adjust shadows and highlights. I do a little unsharping and typically that's it. There are plenty of areas to play with in this stage of editing. All you need to know is layers, masks, curves, brushes and the other ten million tools. There are also another 10 million or so actions and plugins that you can use to help put pop to your photos.

  • I save my final results in a corrected directory. If my image needs noise reduction I use Noiseware Pro

  • For printing I use Qimage to help me get professional result. This is an excellent program

  • I use BreezeBrowser to edit IPTC data and to generate html galleries. I can't recommend this software.

  • I use ThumbsPlus as my photo catalog program. I have used this software for a long time and still think it's the best.

  • I use Panorama Factory for my panoramic stitching. It does well, but I am shopping for the best at the best price.

  • If you have a question feel free to ask me

    		•  This is my normal workflow. Is it the right way or best? I don't know, but this is how I do it.