Black and White Photography with Photoshop – The Art of Transition
Darkroom to Digital
Black and White Photography with Photoshop – The Art of Transition
By Eddie Ephraums
Argentum, 2004
ISBN: 1 902538 28 5
This is a book about why and how to make the transition from darkroom-based monochrome photography to the digital domain.
The book does not, thankfully, attempt to be a Photoshop manual, but rather focuses on how your practice will change in going digital and what the equivalent tools are. The message is assisted by being beautifully illustrated with monochrome images, sometimes with color sections of the Photoshop desktop appropriately placed over them.
Chapters include:
* A digital darkroom
* Traditional black and white
* The tools of black and white
* My approach to printing
* A gallery
* Choices, choices
* Printing with digital
Frankly, this is a fantastic book that I wish it had been around when I was making the transition. Part personal journey and part concrete advice, the book has a lovely, soft, developer smell sort of feel to it that will, I believe, help to make seasoned darkroom workers more comfortable with a digital world. It makes a valid case for remaining with film, if you want, or moving to digital as your capture medium, and chooses to concentrate on what you do with an image once it has been captured.
If you are a traditional darkroom worker looking to move across to digital, get this book. It will make the transition seem all the more natural. Very highly recommended.