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What Do Digital Processing Charges Buy You?
Over the past decade, digital photography has grown into a medium that's truly superior to film. With the right technology in the right hands, a designer or publisher can count on receiving better images, more quickly and at lower end-to-end cost.
Better quality: Digital photos can have less grain and better shadow detail than film. The camera's white-balance capability means all images conform to standard regardless of lighting conditions. No worries about dust, scratches or scanning artifacts; the picture is digital from the start. And every duplicate is first-generation.
Less risk: Digital files don't get ruined at the lab or lost in the mailroom. Nothing to insure, nothing to return.
Creative flexibility: With no consumables to conserve, photographers can capture more images without stretching the budget. Instantaneous feedback on the monitor allows everyone to know that they've gotten the shot before leaving the scene or breaking the set.
Time to market: Digital images are delivered to you in ready-to-use formats. Electronic file transfers can send FPOs and high-res production files anywhere in the world, instantly. Shorter publication delays, later product decisions.
Lower downstream cost: Color-managed images let you take full advantage of automated print technologies such as CTP, CIP4, digital presses, content management systems, etc.
It would be nice if, by eliminating film, digital photography had eliminated all processing expenses. Regrettably, this is not true. Digital cameras impose their own behind-the-scenes costs, which we will describe shortly. The upshot is that although a digital workflow makes for a much less expensive publication process overall, it actually costs the photographer more than a film workflow. This is necessarily reflected in the bill you receive.
The digital workflow: streamlined, not eliminated
Surprisingly, nearly all of the work that used to be done with film still has to get done: Developing, printing and editing have direct analogs within the digital workflow. Captioning has become both more comprehensive and more necessary than before.
Developing: The old-time darkroom is gone. Instead, digital files are downloaded from the camera's flashcards and converted by software to a usable data format for the editing, captioning, retouching, archiving and delivery steps that will follow.
Editing: Instead of contact sheets or chromes on a light table, images are now reviewed by looking at thumbnails on a monitor. Fast hardware and specialized software are needed if this is to happen with reasonable speed. But, aside from the technology used, the process is much the same as before: The photographer selects the acceptable shots to show the client, and the client selects the best ones for the project.
One innovation that has no film equivalent is the group review by people at distant locations. The images are posted on a secure web site, and markups are shared electronically. This is much cheaper and less time-consuming than in-person meetings.Captions: Prior to delivering the file, the photographer tags each image for database searching. The computer can automatically supply some tags (camera settings, date), but the most important information -- the keywords that describe each image's contents -- must be entered by a human who is looking at the picture.
Keywording is time-consuming to do, but it allows fast searching of huge image collections. This can save the day when you're on deadline. Ask your photographer about including client-specific keywords to help with your internal systems for filing and tracking.Printing: Even in the digital age, people like to see reference prints of their photos, and these are normally run out on inkjets.
Messenger services: Telecomm services such as FTP and web sites can rapidly send the pictures to all interested parties: the art director, copy writer, ad agency, printing plant, product manufacturer, etc. The photographer must operate a robust server site, but compared with messenger services or Fedex, electronic delivery allows a tremendous saving of time.
The thing to notice is that the developing and printing processes, which once were jobbed out to specialists, have now been brought in-house. Thus, the photographer now must allot some of his studio space to workstations, monitors and storage devices. The upside is that the photographer and the client have gained more creative control over the images.
But there's more to the story. Many of the procedures that used to be done "downstream" in the workflow -- at the scanner shop, repro house or printer -- are now also being done at the photo studio. This can drastically speed up the entire production cycle, with the greatest time savings occurring in the "close to deadline" production steps.
Taking over from the repro house
Whether film or digital, before a photo goes on press it must be converted into a halftone, or screened, and separated into four or more process-ink layers. Prior to 1998, this was mostly done by specialty firms, called prepress or repro shops, that were staffed by expert scanner operators and dot-etchers. Their services were typically billed at $600 - $800 per hour, and turnaround time was usually a few days.
Why so expensive? The real value that the scanner operator contributed -- and the reason that a five-year apprenticeship was the norm -- was that he performed device-specific color management. He would tune the scan controls to compress the image's tone range to fit within the printable gamut of the printing press. In addition, a good operator adjusted the image's color balance, taking into account the known color characteristics of the film type, the peculiarities of the press (e.g., ink-density limits), the content of the specific image, and the publisher's preferences and prejudices. He would take precautions against moiré and other artifacts. Afterward, he would make a Cromalin or Matchprint proof for client approval. A proof for a full-page color photo (billed separately, of course) typically cost $50 - $100.
The digital workflow revolution has pretty well eliminated the prepress shop as a separate business. Some of its old functions (screening, dot-gain compensation, chokes & spreads) have been completely automated and are now done at the print shop. Typography, degradees and vignettes are part of the page-layout process. And some critical functions, particularly color correction, retouching and tone-range compression, have migrated upstream to the photographer's studio.
Correct at source. There are good reasons why color correction and retouching should be done in the photographer's studio. These tasks require color expertise and judgment, and the photographer is the one who knows what the original scene looked like and what visual effect the photo is supposed to convey. In large measure, the client picks the photographer precisely because of his or her ability to capture the scene and convey the desired effect.
Increasingly, the current industry best practice is to get the image correct at the source and to "tag" the image by embedding an ICC color profile. (More information about profiles is available in the Universal Digital Imaging Photographic Guidelines produced by the UPDIG Working Group.) All subsequent processing steps can -- or at least, should -- automatically adjust for the visual gamut of the intended reproduction technology, such as newsprint, glossy magazines or the World Wide Web. Printers can automate their presses, and thus can turn the work out faster -- which means they can bid jobs more competitively. Publishers, for their part, gain the freedom to assign the printing to multiple printers or to pick the printer at the last moment.
Transition of expectations
The upshot is that digital photography is reducing your costs, both in terms of cash outlays for scanning and printing and of days or weeks shaved from the publication cycle. At the same time, image quality and usefulness have gone up. But, as a side effect, there has been a real increase in the photographer's workload and production expenses. In effect, many costs that formerly were distributed throughout the industry have now been distilled and concentrated in the photo studio.
It is tempting to resist paying these costs which, compared to traditional fee schedules, can look like unmerited price hikes. Don't be deceived; the costs are real. Photographers that fail to recoup them will either be pushed out of business or will go back to film, effectively pushing the costs onto the client again.