140140 PART 3 HOW THE DIGITAL DARKROOM WORKS
IT SEEMSunfeeling to speak of converting a beautiful photograph to data. Whether the photo is of a soldier at
the moment of his death or a centerfold at some less painful moment, surely no one would suggest that all that is
beautiful and exciting in a work of art can be reduced to a few million binary numbers. Well...yes, we would. As
unromantic as it may seem, nearly anything we can experience with our senses can be expressed as numbers.
How about an example? I’m betting you know “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the tracks from Pink Floyd’s Dark
Side of the Moon. It’s sung a cappella and without lyrics by a woman whose wordless wails burst with the emotions
of loss, mourning, and despair. How about we all sing “Great Gig” in the language it was recorded in—binary! All
together now...one, two, three!
1101100011100000111010001111010100000001000011010001010100011110010100100110101010
0000101001001010100010101110101101001011101101111101100001011001000110011001101001
0110110001101110011100011110011....
What’s the matter? Don’t speak binary? Well then, how about hexadecimal? Ready? Everybody!
36 38 3A 3D 40 43 45 47 4A 4D 50 52 54 57 5A 5D 5F 61 64 66 69 6C 6E 71 73 76 79 7B 7E 80 83 86 88
8B 8D 8F 92 95 98 9A 9C 9F A1 A4 A7 A9 AC AE B0 B3 B5 B8 BB BD C0 C2 C5 C7 CA CD CF D1 D4 D6
Okay, you get the idea. No matter what something is, there’s a number for it. The blue of your true love’s eyes? That’s
Pantone 468. Do you have a hard time remembering exactly that cute cleft in the chin of your high school sweet-
heart? There’s a differential calculus function that describes it perfectly—at least to anyone who passed Calculus 101.
Luckily, for those of us who crawled, bleeding, out of high school trig, we don’t have to know all the math behind
computer programs that constitute the digital darkroom. Such software as Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro,
ACDSee Pro, Microsoft Digital Image Suite, and PhotoImpact do a sterling job, most of the time, in hiding numbers
behind onscreen sliders, brushes, curves, multiple choices, check boxes, and icons that look like rubber stamps, pen-
cil erasers, and eye droppers.
I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the
term—meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much
time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching—there
would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can
produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
Ansel Adams