Bits & Bytes:
The Digital Darkroom Page 2
Another Example
Here is another example of how computers and digital imaging can be used to improve upon the results captured on film. Most well known, accomplished photographers would not advertise their mistakes, leaving you to believe that only "perfect" images come out of their cameras each and every time. Since I have not achieved that level of vast publicly recognized image making accomplishment yet, I'll share this image I made of the cathedral in Ulm, Germany and my enhancement of it with you.
| The first image was a time exposure taken on Agfachrome slide film. It was a cold evening and the photographer (me) could not even level the camera on the tripod. Also I was with some friends and did not want to have them wait around while I did such peculiar things as try different time exposures and a few different brackets! So what you see is the image that came back from the Agfa processing lab in Munich in the form of a 35mm slide in 1978 (scanned onto a Kodak Photo CD in 1997). | 
|
| To enhance my image, I opened the high resolution image file on the Photo CD in Adobe Photoshop and rotated it a couple of degrees to straighten out the cathedral steeple. I then cropped the image edges and used the Adjust Auto Levels command to automatically alter the green tint into a more realistic looking nighttime coloring. The last step was to use the sharpen edges command to make the image appear sharper. This looks much nicer and produces a beautiful print from the digital file. | 
|