Real World Print Production

Film has given way to pixels, and we are now beginning to keep our family photos as shoeboxes full of CDs rather than dog-eared color photographic prints. What was once the province of the darkroom became a daylight venture, and the tools of the craftsmen have become available to anyone brave enough to wade in.

Scanners

While early scanners still required highly skilled graphic arts professionals to operate them, they greatly speeded up the process of capturing artwork for color separations. Early analog models used photomultiplier tubes and a daunting array of knobs and buttons to perform the same job that had been done by the huge cameras. The first scanners were petite only by comparison to their gigantic camera ancestors: Many could easily dwarf a Volkswagen. It was necessary to mount artwork on a heavy, clear plastic drum, and then painstakingly ensure that there was no dust or a trapped air bubble to mar the scan. Scanner operators came from the ranks of color-separation cameramen, and their years of finely honed instincts for camera separations translated well to the newer photomechanical methods. The first scanners still produced film output, not pixels. But the next development was the move to digital capture and storage of image information, resulting in the introduction of the pixel and the advent of digital retouching.

In the mid-1990s, improvements in the capabilities and simplicity of flatbed scanners, coupled with the introduction of Adobe Photoshop, led to a major change in the way color separations were performed. It was no longer necessary to mount artwork on cylindrical drums, and the numerous knobs were replaced with onscreen buttons and dialog boxes. The digital imaging revolution was underway. Suddenly, people who weren't sure what color separation meant were making color separations.

As flatbed scanners have become more automated and less expensive, it's relatively easy even for novices to make a decent scan. But the more you know about what constitutes a good image, the better the chance you can create a great image from the pixels generated by your scanner.

Digital Cameras

Today's scanners capture transparencies, reflective images, or illustrations and express them as pixels. But now we're undergoing another revolution. High-end digital cameras now rivalor exceedthe ability of film-based cameras to capture photographic detail. Digital photography also cuts out the middleman. The image captured by the camera is a digital original, so there's no need to scan a print. Of course, the better the camera and the photographer, the better the image. Your mobile phone isn't up to the job.

Imaging Software

Once you have captured pixels, it's likely that you'll want (or need) to do something with them. The industry standard imaging application is Photoshop, and for good reason. Photoshop provides controls for color correction that enable a knowledgeable user to achieve results equal to those of a knob-twisting scanner operator. And its retouching tools surpass the capabilities of the original, million-dollar dedicated systems. If you're just beginning to learn Photoshop, you won't lack for educational resources. You could probably build an addition to your house from the books and magazines devoted to exploring Photoshop. You can add Chapter 9, "Photoshop Production Tips," to the pile.

Photoshop is arguably the most versatile and widely accepted application for image manipulation, but there are other applications that perform useful imaging functions as well.

Adobe Photoshop Album is intended for casual snapshot photographers who want to clean up family photos and create slide shows. It has no support for CMYK images.

Adobe Photoshop Elements might be regarded as Photoshop Light, but it still packs a hefty arsenal of retouching and color-correction tools. The product is geared toward enthusiasts rather than professional photographers and lacks support for CMYK images.

Adobe Lightroom^™ is engineered for use by photographers working with raw digital images. It provides sophisticated tools for organizing and color correcting images. As of this writing, Lightroom is in public beta for Macintosh, but will soon be a shipping product for both Macintosh and Windows.

Apple iPhoto^® offers features similar to those in Photoshop Album. Geared toward hobbyists, iPhoto has organizational tools and limited color-correction capabilities, but no support for CMYK. As you might expect, iPhoto is available only for the Macintosh operating system.

Apple Aperture is targeted to photographers working with raw digital files. It provides organizational tools as well as color correction controls. Aperture is Macintosh-only.

These are not the only solutions that exist for manipulating images. There are painting programs, such as Painter^™ and Paint Shop Pro^® (both from Corel ^®), which let you easily make images resemble watercolors or oil paintings. There are countless plug-ins that enhance the Photoshop toolset. Imaging tools for consumer and hobbyist photographers increase on a daily basis. Even Microsoft^® has entered the market with the Digital Imaging Suite. However, most of these programs don't offer support for CMYK images, so they're not the best tools if you're preparing images for print.