Hogs: Three interrelated technique and digital printing questions: How do you spot doge and burn using any of these processing platforms—Lightszone, Canon proprietary DPP, PhotoScape, GIMP 2 – in all of them there are ways to change the tones, saturation, contrast, backlight, alien infrared, sepia, on the entire image but no ability to selectively “spot” hold light back or add light (data) in as I used to do in, in my darkroom for over 30 years. I’m including a recent image of a waterfall as an example. Shot in color in Raw, converted with Canon DPP for HDR, one would want to burn in the bushes a bit more on both the right and left bottoms. But darkening the image ruins the details in the black and gray shadows in the foreground on both the right and left. How can you digitally doge and burn? If buying Adobe Photoshop is the way, I’ll do it. Next Q. - there are B & White presets, Grayscale, Bandicoot and Sepia, but I have never seen any ooption in any program for Selenium printing. What gives with that? Finally, is there any qualitative difference between printing at COSTCO and printing at Staples? I frequently see recommendations for COSTCO here at UHH. I have a hardly used Canon i950 at home and could download drivers, buy new inks, etc. but there is currently a very good Canon promotion on the Pixma Pro 100 so wouldn’t that be better? Why print at COSTCO or Staples if you have a 13 X 19 pro printer? Sorry, I guess that was 4 questions! Thanks in advance.

Actually a lot more than four questions. Selenium toning is available in Lightroom. Dodging and burning can be done several ways in all of those systems, although I think LightRoom is the easiest. In any system it can easily be done by creating a masking layer, selectively bringing down highlights or bringing up shadows in that area, and merging the layers with a soft edge between the various layers. Quality printers are not cheap and are a little fussy if not well maintained - if you're not going to use it regularly, it's not generally going to pay off. The Pixma with full tanks is about $350, and paper's $10-15 for 8x10, $30 or $40 for 11x14. The math is easy to do, but if you're not planning to run at least a couple of pieces per week through it, you may have problems with ink drying, etc. Costco uses high quality printers and it's about six bucks for a 16x20. That makes a cheap "no fuss" alternative for many people.


Plenty more information on the UHH if you use the search feature.

Andy