Reviews for Digital Negatives: Using Photoshop to Create Digital Negatives for Silver and Alternative Process Printing

1. An amazingly well written book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, October 12th, 2009

   I am so pleased that, despite reading the previous review, I went on to buy the book. Few books are so well organized and self contained.
   
   The authors explain with great clarity the procedure from beginning to end, without assuming any prior knowledge on the subject.
   
   They make no secret that they predilect palladium printing and the book is interspersed with some impressive samples. But this does not mean that they concentrate exclusively on this particular technique. On the contrary it covers with meticulous detail all the associated indispensable steps from scanning, preparing the file in photoshop, making calibration curves, printing the digital negative on an inkjet printer down to the last steps of how to use the darkroom (or an improvised one) to make the final print.
   
   I read and buy many books and I wish there were more like this one.
   
   

2. A book for the minority of the minority

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, January 12rd, 2009

   I hoped this book would expand on the work of Burkholder. It's subtitle strongly suggests it creates digital negatives that work with Silver prints. Not one illustration in the book is of a normal silver monochrome print. If you read the one chapter which mentions silver printing, and the problem page, it basically says the process is picky-picky, the printers have issues and one is left with the conclusion that this book is for the miniscule minority that coat their own papers with platinum and palladium. This book does not move anything further forward than the Burkholder books for those who want to make silver prints from digital files, although its explanation of the digital negative process is clearer in some respects.