Digital Prints

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Mastering Digital Printing
various file and input/output formats, masking, cloning, painting and retouching,
Photoshop plug-in compatibility, and color management support.
Here is a summary of the most popular, image-editing software used to help photographer-artists
process and prepare their images for printing. (If you’re using a paint program,
many image-editing functions are available within that program, although you will still
want to consider having a separate image editor, too.)
Photoshop
Adobe’s Photoshop is the gold standard of image-editing software for most serious digital
photographer-artists. It’s the most expensive, the most complex, and for many, the most
intimidating piece of software they will ever own.
I was intimidated at first, too. I had Photoshop 2.1 sitting in a corner unused for a couple
of years; I was scared to death of it. Then I upgraded to version 5.5 and decided it was time
to learn it. Many, many hours later, the veil finally lifted. Now, with the later versions, including
version 8 (“CS”), I don’t know how I existed without Photoshop. I use it constantly for
image editing, and because of that, it’s as familiar as an old sweater. Not that I know everything
there is to know about it. I don’t. I consider Photoshop a lifetime learning experience.
What’s so great about Photoshop?
■ With CS, broad support for the first time of both 16-bit and camera RAW images. This
is high-level, high-powered stuff for serious digital imagers and printers.
■ Full CMYK color support including custom CMYK separations, which are essential for
commercial printing or pre-press work. In addition, support for important L*a*b* color.
■ Comprehensive color management options that are hard to match elsewhere. This is an
important aspect of high-quality digital printing. A key part of this is the ability to “soft
proof” or show you what an RGB image will look like printed to an inkjet or other digital
device (starting with Version 6). See the next chapter for more about this.
■ All kinds of sophisticated image-editing tools including, with CS: Shadow/Highlight
adjustment, Match Color for making colors in separate images consistent, Color
Replacement for changing color while retaining texture, an enhanced File Browser for
viewing and opening image thumbnails, and Photomerge for panorama stitching (which
was only available in Photoshop Elements until Photoshop CS).
■ A final advantage is Photoshop’s redundancy. There are many ways to do the same thing,
which can be a big plus in terms of flexibility and tailoring the program to your needs.
In basic terms, if you’re in the business of digital imaging and printing, you’ll want
Photoshop. If not, you may not need all the horsepower that Photoshop offers. Depending
on your goals, one of the following software programs may be all you require.
Photoshop Elements
Adobe’s Photoshop Elements is a trimmed down Photoshop targeted to those doing digital
photography. If that’s all you’re doing, then Elements may be all you really need. It
combines image editing, photo retouching, and web-graphics creation, and it has most of
the core functions of Photoshop like Levels, Color Balance, and other features that are in
some cases only available through the use of outside work-arounds.