The death of the darkroom

Robin looked at the print I had just taken out of the printer. Next to it was a silver print of the same image. "Gee, this looks better hon. Does that mean we get our laundry room back now?"

How did I finally get to this point? Three key steps: scanner, software, paper. A couple weeks ago I bought a Nikon Coolscan 9000, and the other day the glass carrier for it finally came in. Now I can scan my Xpan negatives and have them actually be sharp corner to corner.

I came across a Photoshop plug-in (for Windows only), NegPos, from C-F-Systems. It inverts a negative in Photoshop with an algorythm that is much smarter than the basic Invert command in Photoshop. One way it does this is by working on the linear data from the scanner in 16 bit (you have to modify the menu commands to get yours to give you the unprocessed data, but they have a cheat sheet for the major scanner brands). The documentation that comes with the plug in is way geekier than I can understand, and their website is seriously lacking in the clarity department. And you really have to read the manual to begin to do much. They have 30 day, fully functional trials on all their products, and an advanced version of the program once you buy a license. After one scan I bought a license. It was that radically superior to anything I had ever seen before in the tonal range and depth of a scanned negative.

The third component is Crane’s new Museo Silver Rag paper. I’ve had a roll of it sitting around for a month, waiting for an opportunity to see if it would live up to the hype. This paper is supposed to match the dynamic range of silver paper, and it has a similar surface to air-dried glossy fiber paper. Well, the hype is true. The ICC profile on the Crane site is pretty awful (I had a blue cast on the first try), but through Quad Tone RIP it looks stunning.

The headline on the Crane site is not too far off the mark: Announcing—The Death of the Darkroom.

Comments

[Eric Hancock]

I'm using Museo Silver Rag, Innova's FibaPrint Glossy, Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl, and Oriental's Graphica FB glossy.

All have different finishes that are reasonably close to some kind of silver paper, and all are able to reproduce great images.

Fine Art Pearl seems to have the best profiles, making printing somewhat easier than the rest.

The Oriental paper has been so-so with monochome images, but has been spectacular on color.

The FibaPrint has been great with monochrome images and fleshtones.

I'm withholding judgement on the Silver Rag, as I like the surface, but I find the poor profiles very frustrating (I waste a lot of paper).

It is quite exciting to have enough of a selection of papers to choose the best one for the image. And these are just the glossy ones.

[Paul McEvoy]

Hi Doug,

Just wondering what kind of printer you are using?

Thanks
Paul McEvoy

paulmcevoy75[{at}]gmail.com

[david adam edelstein]

OK, I just downloaded the NegPos plugin. Wow. That's really terrific. Saves me hours of correction, really, to get negs to look like they did in the darkroom.

[James Poyner]

Couldn't agree more on the NegPos plug-in Doug. I thought it was wonderful... until I tried ColorNeg from the same clever people at c-f-systems. Even better! Much easier interface to understand and it works just as well with B&W as colour.

Keep up the good work

[Gareth Jolly]

Have a look at www.imagescience.com.au

They have some B&W profiles for siler rag for their Epson large format printer but the profiles seem to work well on my Epson R2400