Back in the old days, working in a chemical
darkroom, I could only have dreamed of a postprocessing
tool as wonderful as Photoshop. But
for me that’s exactly what Photoshop is—a tool.
It’s a tool that helps me as a professional image
creator. The image is what matters, not the tool.
The Photoshop Darkroom 2: Creative Digital
Transformations looks at the features of
Photoshop as practical aids in making great digital
images. I don’t focus on the latest and greatest
Photoshop menus and palettes. For the most part,
the Photoshop techniques shown in the book can
be done using the core features of Photoshop.
These features have generally been available
going back many versions. Think of it this way: in
a film darkroom the recipes for developer changed
over time, but the underlying idea of how to
develop film and paper stayed the same.
The goal of The Photoshop Darkroom series is to
inspire you and provide you with techniques to
try. A digital image starts with a capture or a scan
and proceeds through post-processing towards
its final state. How well your image comes out
depends upon your mastery of the craft of digital
post-processing and—far more important—your
imagination. I’d like The Photoshop Darkroom
books to be your guide and companion on this
exciting journey.
A digital camera is a special purpose computer
attached to a lens and a scanner. It makes sense
to process imagery in the more powerful context
of a desktop computer (and Photoshop) rather
than in the camera.
It also is just common sense to make the best
photos you can using your camera. Relying on
Photoshop to fix sloppy photography is a waste
of time and creative energy. Therefore I’ll give you
pointers about how to photograph with digital
post-processing in mind—which is very different
than being a lazy photographer.
The Photoshop Darkroom 2: Creative Digital
Transformations follows The Photoshop Darkroom:
Creative Digital Post-Processing and can be read
either as a sequel to the first volume or on its
own. We’ve worked hard to make this volume
self-contained—however, we didn’t want to
be overly repetitive of material that is amply
covered in the first volume. Where appropriate I’ll
provide page references to the earlier Photoshop
Darkroom book for more in-depth coverage of
certain topics.
The emphasis in this volume is on creative
transformations. This involves a wide range of
image creation challenges from cleaning up an
image that is “almost there”—and requires a little
retouching—to creating entirely new fantastic
digital images that are derived using compositing
and other techniques.
As with the first Photoshop Darkroom book, I
make no claims that the techniques I present
are the only way, or even the best way, to do
something. Photoshop is an incredibly rich
and complex software environment with many
moving parts and many ways to do anything.
The most I can do is to show you the way I work
in Photoshop on a daily basis as a professional
photographer and image creator. If you can find
a better or more fun way to accomplish the same
tasks, more power to you—and please drop me a
line to tell me your technique.
Once again, I am blessed with the perfect coauthor,
Phyllis Davis. Phyllis makes me complete
in many ways. She is also a great antidote to my
tendency to wave my hands about the details of a
process—because she insists on complete clarity
and wants every step to be explained carefully.
I love spending time behind the camera and I love
spending time working on images in Photoshop.
It’s my hope that this book helps inspire you to
work on your digital imagery in post-processing
with as much joy as I do—enjoy!
