Hello Photrio,
I am considering building a lightroom plugin that can take a scanned negative, and then simulate what a B+W print would look like at each contrast grade. Before I begin, I would like to address a lot of the common responses I feel this might get:
1. Why do this? Lightroom offers everything you can do in the darkroom and more, with a touch of a button. Lightroom also was already designed with the darkroom in mind. Isn't this going full circle?
The purpose of this is more to practice workflows and darkroom thinking. Instead of being able to adjust the curve, you will have to play with exposure, grade, split grade, dodge/burn, toning, etc.
2. Why not just do it all in the darkroom the old fashioned way? If you are scanning it, whats the point?
The reality is that I, and many people, do not have permanent or free and unlimited access to a darkroom. Community darkrooms are expensive, and when paying for time, mistakes add up. Additionally if developing at home, you can get very comfortable overdeveloping or underexposing because you can get a good image with it in lightroom, whereas in the darkroom it could be challenging or impossible to get a decent print out of it. With this, you could get fast, quality, and free feedback.
3. I can make a contact sheet in one go, then based on that guess exposures and grades for all my prints. Maybe just get good?
That is wonderful for you
4. This all depends on your enlarger, light source, paper, water ph, the phase of the moon, etc.
Assume that I will be standardizing everything on my enlarger (condensor) and a single paper type (ilford MG RC).
Ok, now onto the rest of the post. What I am envisioning is that from a scan of the negative, you can simulate what it would look like at each grade at different exposure levels. You can manipulate an exposure slider to see the shadows come in, then midtones, highlights etc, all the way to a way overexposed print. This way, you can easily see how your exposure and development was and will allow you to plan how to spend your time in the darkroom.
My main question is, what kind of knowledge will this take to accomplish? Will it require an understanding of densitometry? How do things like base fog come into play (and how do you measure it in a scan?) Will I need to include sprockets in the scan to get the pure light source? I'm guessing I will need to make standardized reference prints at all the different grades to base my conversions on, and then map that to the values of the scanned negative.
Any guidance on where to start would be appreciated. I'm a software engineer, so the programming will not be a problem. Thanks!
I am considering building a lightroom plugin that can take a scanned negative, and then simulate what a B+W print would look like at each contrast grade. Before I begin, I would like to address a lot of the common responses I feel this might get:
1. Why do this? Lightroom offers everything you can do in the darkroom and more, with a touch of a button. Lightroom also was already designed with the darkroom in mind. Isn't this going full circle?
The purpose of this is more to practice workflows and darkroom thinking. Instead of being able to adjust the curve, you will have to play with exposure, grade, split grade, dodge/burn, toning, etc.
2. Why not just do it all in the darkroom the old fashioned way? If you are scanning it, whats the point?
The reality is that I, and many people, do not have permanent or free and unlimited access to a darkroom. Community darkrooms are expensive, and when paying for time, mistakes add up. Additionally if developing at home, you can get very comfortable overdeveloping or underexposing because you can get a good image with it in lightroom, whereas in the darkroom it could be challenging or impossible to get a decent print out of it. With this, you could get fast, quality, and free feedback.
3. I can make a contact sheet in one go, then based on that guess exposures and grades for all my prints. Maybe just get good?
That is wonderful for you
4. This all depends on your enlarger, light source, paper, water ph, the phase of the moon, etc.
Assume that I will be standardizing everything on my enlarger (condensor) and a single paper type (ilford MG RC).
Ok, now onto the rest of the post. What I am envisioning is that from a scan of the negative, you can simulate what it would look like at each grade at different exposure levels. You can manipulate an exposure slider to see the shadows come in, then midtones, highlights etc, all the way to a way overexposed print. This way, you can easily see how your exposure and development was and will allow you to plan how to spend your time in the darkroom.
My main question is, what kind of knowledge will this take to accomplish? Will it require an understanding of densitometry? How do things like base fog come into play (and how do you measure it in a scan?) Will I need to include sprockets in the scan to get the pure light source? I'm guessing I will need to make standardized reference prints at all the different grades to base my conversions on, and then map that to the values of the scanned negative.
Any guidance on where to start would be appreciated. I'm a software engineer, so the programming will not be a problem. Thanks!