This is the beginning of our section on Software For The Digital Darkroom. We intend to add many software titles and reference books to this section in the near future.   Be sure to visit our Profile Library and Photoshop Reference Book pages.

Photoshop Classes Pro Digital Imaging in Pheonix, AZ teaches Photoshop to photographers. The students obtain information that would take them years to learn on their own. If you live in Pheonix or are planning on visiting, sign up for a Steve Burger Photoshop class, you will be glad you did. Read what some of his students had to say.... Here is what Steve says... "I moved to Pheonix in 1972 and opened up a custom black & white lab. We offered archival printing, and printed on the finest papers available. Over the years we printed for many master photographers and some of those prints are hanging in the Smithsonian Institute today. We now find ourselves in a renaissance of printmaking. With Photoshop and the myriad of output devices, our options are limitless. Currently I'm printing on an Epson printer that has a continuous ink system from MIS. I'm using their UT7 inks with Eboni black ink. Let's just say I couldn't be happier with the system. Today I find myself full circle. I'm making archival prints on the finest papers available, and the prints are spectacular. The quality of these prints prove we are truly in a renaissance of print making." Steve recently told us, "Out of all the choices for black & white printing, MIS Ultratone inks produce the best looking black & white prints". He recommends our products to his students. We are pleased about this, of course. It is quite evident that Steve is master black and white printer, judging by the prints he has sent for us to examine. Whether you need to improve your photography skills, color managment techniques, photoshop knowledge, or learn how to print your black and white images, Pro Digital Image is the place to go.

Color Management In the non digital world, color management is primarily done via the film selection and the processing of the film. In general, this is not under control of the photographer or artist. In the digital world it is different, the photographer is responsible for managing the colors. Color management is accomplished with something called an ICC profile. These profiles are applied through Adobe Photoshop and other graphic design software packages. Your software must be capable of accepting an ICC profile for this software to work. Basically the process goes like this... The software produces a color target which you print on your uncalibrated inkjet printer. You then take this multi- colored target and paste it onto a sheet of paper along with an official Kodak color target that has true colors on it. The two targets are then scanned in your flatbed scanner. The software sees both the true, Kodak, colors and the colors produced by your printer. After the scan, it now knows how to compensate the colors you print so that they will match the Kodak true colors. (It is not quite this simple, but this is the general idea.)

Picture Window Pro Picture Window Pro is a complete, full featured advanced image editor. It provides multiple ways to control tonality and color, including curves and histograms. Advanced cropping, sharpening, up sampling, perspective correction, cloning and many other tools to let you get the most out of your digital images. This is an alternative to using Adobe Photoshop. It is less expensive and easier to use. It will accept correction curves, and can be used for making B&W prints with MIS inks and Workflows. It can be purchased from the manufacturer, Digital Light & Color for $90.00 (last time we looked on 11/03).

The MIS Profile Library is your first place to turn for Color Management using MIS Archival Inks. We are creating profiles for all of the popular printers and papers that are used with our Archival ink. It is a work in progress, not all of them are done yet. Visit our Profile Library to find a quick and simple way to produce sharp and accurate color archival prints.

Photoshop Reference Library

We are now affiliated with Amazon.Com. You can buy the books we have listed in our Photoshop Reference Library from our site, the order will be filled and delivered by Amazon. If you have a favorite Photoshop or Photography book, please let us know what it is so we can add it to our reference library. Just send a quick email with title and author.

Make Your Own Slideshow

PHPSlideShow v0.6.2 written by Greg Lawler is freeware. It is a simple way of making a series of images into a slideshow. Here is how to do it.... 1.   You must have access to a webserver that supports PHP. If you have your own webpage, this should be simple. If not, you are going to have to learn a little more about how to get your own web-space. Yahoo, MSN and others provide free webspace that you can use for your own webpage or slideshow. 2.   Set up a folder on your webserver to contain all the photos you want in your Slideshow. 3.   Before you upload the photos, make sure they are all sized to something less than 600x800 or they will be too big. They do not all have to be the same size, as long as they are viewable on the screen without having to use scroll bars. If you don't know how to size your photos, you will need some graphic software like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. 4.   Once the photos are resized and sharpened, then upload them to your designated folder on your web server. Using WS_FTP is the most common method for uploading. 5.   Now all you need is a copy of PHPSlideShow v0.6.2. Download it from our site, here. This is a zip file and it will have to be unzipped using Winzip or PKZip before it can be used. 6.   Upload phpslideshow.php to your designated slideshow folder on your webserver. Now you can view the pictures. 7.   The URL to see your Slideshow is http://www.your_website_name.com/slideshow_folder/phpslideshow.php. Note if your website is a dot net or dot org type site then use .net or .org instead of .com in the URl to your slideshow. 8.   Greg has done a good job of commenting the phpslideshow.php software. View the program in Notepad, Wordpad or a HTML editor. Read the comments to learn how to customize your slide show. We have done some customizing of our copy, you may want to get the original from Greg's site and experiment with your own custom effects. For example, the heading can eaisly be changed or deleted. Click on the green headline above to see an example of a slideshow.

© Copyright 2008 MIS Associates Inc. All Rights Reserved.