Photo Manipulation in History

• The darkroom experts opened the rolled film or negative out of the camera for developing.
• Then, they bring out the negative from the rolled box for developing and in this time, the negative looks completely dark as it was you can find anything captured here. After developing, the captured photos become visible in the negative as like a white-gray shadow.
• They cut out the beginning part and the ending part of the long lace like negative by scissors.
• They loaded that negative with another large developing wheel for rolling and put it into a tank and finally set the cap. They performed the whole process with the clean and dry hand.
• Now, they poured chemical mixture water into the tank and shakes the tank few time to remove the air bubbles. The water must be hot and its temperature should be 60 to 70 degree Celsius. It took at least six minutes for developing.
• Then, they removed the water and filled with Stop Bath chemical mixing water again and again shake in the same way.
• Next, they filled the tank with Fixture which is another chemical mixture vey necessary for film developing and shake again. It took usually 5-10 minutes.
• Now, the photos became visible on the negative and this time they could print and wash the photos.
• The developers placed the negative under a projector with a frame for printing. Here, they printed the photos with the projector-light on a photographic paper in the darkroom that take much time.
• They took the printed paper on a tray & drowned into chemical water.
• At this stage, they shook the paper very slowly. They did Develop 1 minute, then Stop 1 minute, and finally Fixer 1 minute. Then, water rinses at least 5 minutes for washing. All these process they had to do very carefully because there is a chance to be destroyed the image.
• Finally, they dried the image with dry wind blowing or keeping under hot light and in this way, the image became ready for use.

Photo Editing and Manipulation In The Darkroom

Image editing or manipulation activities in the darkroom were not as easy & cool as the modern photo editing in Adobe Photoshop. It was very hard working task and time consuming also. It was then almost like drawing a painting from a scratch.

Spot Removing: In the darkroom, the image developer removed spots from photos by maintaining analog process, such as-

• Firstly, they placed an image with spots on a table.
• They taped the image on the table to stop the unwanted moving at the time of retouching.
• They applied thin but long brushes according to their requirements.
• Considering the type spots, they selected different types of inks, water, chemicals, and more.
• They took different colors with the various brushes, tried outside the negative to match with the color of the other portions of the image. They did it so that they could a flawless photo without any distortion.
• When they got the best match, they applied the color on the spot they wanted to remove and let it dry under sun or in the darkroom under hot light.
• Finally, by maintaining this ways, they completed the small amount of spot fixing works in the darkroom.

Negative Retouching:

• They took a black & white negative for applying lighting effect on a table and taped it tightly to stop moving. If it moved, they could do the task well.
• For getting a clear view, they used sharp pen and magnifying glass. It provided a zoomed in advantage to the retoucher.
• Then they made numerous white dots on the spot by hitting with the sharp pen where it was needed white light.
• As a result, when they developed & washed out the negative, they got a white light on the dark portion of the photo. This process provided a lighting feel on the image.

History of Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is the most powerful and widely used photo editing and manipulation software globally that has a wide range of powerful tools and options. It was invented first time by Thomas Knoll and John Knoll. Later, when they sold out the license to the Adobe systems in 1988, they launched this software first. This very software has brought out a revolution in the field of image editing industry.

At the beginning, the very word ‘photoshop’ aroused a laughter, but as time goes, its necessity and usefulness has revealed. Day by day, this editing software has become very popular and unavoidable part to the graphic designers and photographers and even to the people who are not related to commercial photography. Its application arena has been widen with the good crowd of tools and options, and has become beneficiary for the various designs, graphic design, image manipulation, image retouching, and more. Many graphic design companies have grown relying on the very software with the progression of the digital photography, ecommerce business, and many more.

How Did the Photoshop Tool’s Icon Originate?

From time to time, the icons of Photoshop has been changed or developed. There is a great variety in the shape and appearance of the photoshop icons which are available now.  There are some icons that are looking exactly as you think it should be, but there are some tools, seeing those you cannot but laugh at their appearance. However, know how they have originated from the old darkroom studio.

Crop Tool:

The crop tool is a very useful tool and it mostly used for cutting any individual portion of any photo. Its appearance is something funny. This tool is mostly looked like the original darkroom cropping tool. Its sliding gizmo let the darkroom experts to crop and to resize any image maintaining the same aspect ratio. This photoshop tool has originated from this tool as it is shown in the image above.

Brush Tool:

In the Adobe Photoshop software, there are various types of brush tools viz Brush tool, History brush tool, Healing brush tool, many creative brush tool, etc. These tools are being widely used in the image editing sectors for image retouching. The brush tools are also originated from the darkroom brushes as these were. Look over the darkroom brushes in the above image.

Dodge and Burn Tool:

The dodge and the burn tool of photoshop have come from the darkroom’s original lollipop shaped tools which are shown in the above image.

Ethics and Aesthetics of photo editing and manipulation:

In case of Photo editing, there is a crowed who shows their opposite opinion regarding ethics and aesthetics. Actually, ethics is a set of rules and aesthetic is related to nature and beauty. But, yet there are some guys who mix the two terms together.

In image editing, ethics is a decent issue. If the editing on a photo is excessive and make fake the true message in the image, it’ll destroy the main purpose of the image manipulation. There are some images that you should not edit such as: politics or politicians, war photos, natural calamities, and more. Because, the manipulation of this type of image ruins the real message. The visitors and the readers always like to see or know the realistic photos with the actual news. There is no place for the fake images. Any kind of image editing in the print media, can also mean yellow journalism that is not expected. There are some magazines such as National Geographic, Discovery, and etc. use a little bit of image retouching methods to enhance the aesthetics. In these kinds of fields, reality matters most than the glittering appearance.

However, the themes, aesthetics and ethics are two different opinions. It’s actually all about how true message you are giving to your followers. If the image editing is too much that provides totally alternative message to the readers and viewers, then that is not ethical. But, if the editing is enough to maintain the real message, then there is nothing unethical issue.

According to the aesthetic opinion, image editing is almost limitless since it is related to the beauty. But, yet as long as it seems natural, you can edit for beautification. There are some sectors which take high end photo editing. These sectors are related to fashion and model photos, fashion magazines, fine art photography, paintings, and more. The main purpose of the image editing is to make the photos more beautiful and appealing than before.

Image manipulation for beautification has an old history. Earlier than Adobe Photoshop, it was very laborious and time consuming as well, but just after the invention of the Photoshop software, it has become easier and more accurate. The Photoshop has increased the scope of image manipulation. This tool will provide you the photos in the way as you desired to have and this feature has made the Photoshop, its various tools and options popular.