Processing procedure steps

[beejaylad]

I'm a very (I'll repeat that :meh: - a very ) long term film and chemical photographer making the change to digital and I've got a problem: How do you know when you've finished processing?

In film the developing is straight forward, you've done your experiments and arrived at a set of exposure and development values that work for your system. The controls in printing are limited, a certain amount of dodging and burning in and maybe a little bit of local agitation in the developer and that's it. You can go on to do a little airbrushing maybe but normally once it's been through the wash and dried or maybe glazed and that's it - hand it to the client.

I love Lightroom as it is the closest to what I'm familiar with but I keep on thinking, "I can improve that," or, "just a slight darken there," or maybe, "a smidgin more colour saturation here." A single shot can take ages!!

Do you have a regular routine that you follow? How do you know when to stop?

 

[beejaylad]

I don't think so in my case. Film has a number of 'bus stops' along the way, stages in the whole process where there is an enforced junction or stopping point:

1. Go into the darkroom, prepare the chemicals and get them to the correct temperature. Turn out the lights and load the film into the tank and then process with or without the lights on depending on the kind of tank.
2. Finish processing, wash the film to remove chemicals and then hang up to dry. Go and have a cup of coffee or go to bed if it's that time of day.
3. Go back into the darkroom, check the negatives, maybe make a contact sheet meaning you go back into the dark. Wash the contact sheet and dry it. Then pick and mark up the frames you're going to print.
4. Set up the enlarger, do some test prints, mark them up for dodging and burning in.
5. Make some prints, if you were lucky the burning and dodging went right, if not back again to make a further set, perhaps even more with difficult subjects.
6. When the prints are washed and dried comes the more critical check, the spotting to remove little specks due to dust, maybe a nit of airbrushing to 'tart' the picture up for inclusion in a magazine or advert.
7. Trimming to size.
8. Delivering to the client with the invoice.

All of those steps had finite start and end points where the process required time for a chemical step when the photographer could do nothing but wait even if you had equipment that did whatever it was for you. In digital there just don't seem to be any steps once the image is taken into the computer - you can just go on and on and keep on coming back to it. Ultimately you have to say, "That's enough, I want a life!" Or, alternatively, you can go out to take some more pictures and begin it all again. That's why I found Victoria's tip so good, you introduce a break, even go to bed and come back the next day, and look at the mess you've made, so you can start again!!