You're Ready For The Next Step

Many photographers reach a point where they are ready to grab the reins and take control of their entire imaging process. This used to require a dark corner in the basement and a lot of smelly chemicals. Today's 'Digital Darkroom' offers the same level of satisfaction and personal expression without getting your fingers wet.

"Porter's Ultimate Digital Darkroom has all of the tools needed to manage, edit, back-up, print or share digital images and movies. If I were putting together my first digital imaging workstation these are the tools that I'd have to start with a good foundation." - ed.

The first step is organization and Adobe Lightroom 3 is the champ. Import your image or video files into an organized space. Back-up your imported files on the fly. Globally adjust and tune images. Create slide shows and web albums. Manage printing. All with one program.

When you need to edit specific areas in your image files Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 offers photographers everything they need for simple to high-level editing.

Does your camera capture video? Adobe Premiere Elements 8 is the right tool to turn a bunch of video clips into a great movie. Add transitions, cut and edit scenes, add titles and captions. Upload to YouTube, burn to DVD or CD, all in HD or standard definition.

For precise actions when using Adobe editing software a pen tablet can be helpful. Wacom's Bamboo Pen and Touch Tablet adds fingertip scroll controls and pressure sensitive pen control. Using a pen tablet is a unique experience, and once mastered you may never use a mouse to edit again!

Before editing pictures or movies your computer's monitor needs to be color balanced. A monitor that is out of balance is the #1 reason our images don't look the same printed as when we edited them.
The DataColor Spyder 3 series of color balancing tools makes the job easy. Choose:

Spyder 3 Express for fast and easy monitor color balance.
Spyder 3 Pro which adds a room ambient light monitor so your LCD screen looks great under any light
Spyder 3 Elite is the choice for photographers with multiple monitor setups. Elite keeps them all balanced to the same target.

When it's time to show off your work nothing is better than a print. And a BIG print is even better! Porter's Ultimate Digital Darkroom offers the choice of two outstanding Canon printers. Both offer border-less prints of any size up to 13X19". High resolution printing using Canon's FINE print technology. Dual paper paths allow the photographer to keep their basic paper surface loaded in the paper tray while providing a sheet fed bypass for art paper stocks.

The Canon PRO9000 printer uses eight dye based inks for 100 year archival print life.
The Canon PRO9500 uses ten pigment inks including Gray and Photo Black for even better archival life and more vivid colors.

Finally, do you have a removable hard drive for file back-up? Every photographer needs at least one! The question isn't if your computer's hard drive will crash, the real question is when will it happen? Backing up your image and video library to a removable hard drive like the Fantom Green Drive is a first step in preventing a catastrophic loss. Using two drives is a best bet, Read More About Back-Up in the second half of this Porter's Blog entry. Choose the size of your optional back-up drive:

Select the One Tera-Byte GreenDrive particularly if you shoot video, also if you would like to back up your document and other files too.
Choose the 500GB GreenDrive if you prefer to keep your back-up limited to image and video files.
FYI - 500GB can hold between 150,000 and 200,000 image files depending on the camera's file sizes. Video will take much more space!