Photographers should be no strangers to darkroom techniques. Already over a century old, playing with light to alter images has become so common that film photographers today consider it among the most basic of post-processing skills.
However, ask digital photography hobbyists about accessories such as enlargers, filters and test strips, or even burning and dodging techniques, and you’ll soon realise that many are completely in the dark. This is where Darkr comes in. It offers you the entirety of the darkroom experience, all within the comfort of your device.
Set the tone for your image
Traditionally, photographers would make prints by projecting light through negatives onto photographic paper using an enlarger, inserting filters in between to control the contrast.
Contrast is the difference between the lights and darks of a negative and can help set the tone of your image. A photo with high contrast will typically look more multi-dimensional, or appear to ‘pop’. In Darkr, you can swipe to select from a range of filters (from the softest 00 to a hard 5) to find the perfect mood for your photo.
The example we have here was taken under good lighting conditions, so its contrast is inherently high. Therefore, we chose a 3.5 filter for it.
Use optimal exposure time to highlight details
Darkroom printing boils down to re-exposing your negatives and adjusting the lights, shadows and colours. The longer you expose an image, the darker its colours become. The next step towards creating your perfect image is learning to use test strips to find the optimal exposure time for your negative in the enlarger. To realistically recreate the layers of colour in the photo, you’ll need to make sure your whites are white enough, and the darks are pitch black.
Darkr lets you preview your photos on test strips, each with a second of difference in exposure time. If you want to see how more or less exposure affects your image, simply scroll up or down for more test results. This design provides some much-needed simplification to the traditional testing method. The tedious testing of the past is now automated for you.
Make micro-adjustments by burning and dodging areas of your image
Even if you’ve mastered these basic skills, you’re still quite some way from getting the perfect image. To do so, you’ll have to adjust the exposure time for different objects. Since digital cameras usually use a uniform exposure time, a lot of the details get lost in the image’s high- and low-light areas.
Solving this problem requires some dodging and burning. Together, they can adjust the exposure, and therefore colour, of specific areas of a photo. To do that, you’ll need to mask off areas where you want the colour vibrancy reduced, or do the opposite and expose where you want the colours to appear darkened. Then, add exposure to the image to highlight its various details.
What makes the darkroom so much fun is that the different combinations of different exposure times and filters can produce countless results. If you take your time to get into the nooks and crannies of the craft, you’re sure to see film photography in a whole new light.