Main > Digital Zone System > Workflow © Eric Kahler

The Digital Zone System Workflow

"The general rule of controlled development is that increasing the amount of development increases the contrast of the negative, and reducing development reduces contrast." -Ansel Adams, The Negative

 

The two major portions of our digital workflow are analogous to those of the traditional darkroom workflow. We first develop what was a negative, but is in our case a positive, and we then prepare a print from the positive.

For illustrative and experiential purposes we will be using the picture you made with your camera of the greyscale print that you had made in The Digital Zone System Foundations. This will also give us perfect symmetry; a 1:1 correlation between what we visualized, exposed, and later remap. I will keep this workflow to the most simple of procedures, a most basic workflow, if you will.

Start with shutting off the lights so that glare on your monitor does not interfere with your visual perception. It's also a good idea to keep your window borders or desktop color scheme as neutral as possible, again to minimize interference with your visual perception.

Import your photograph into your graphics program through your normal means. For this tutorial we will be using PhotoShop. If you are using a program which performs some sort of import translation (e.g. RAW), ensure that you use the lowest settings for sharpness, contrast, and saturation to minimize arbitrary editing decisions performed by the import software.

Remove Saturation

Create Reference Points

Note the current value of the photograph corresponding to Zone VIII. We placed it on Zone VIII by adjusting our meter accordingly. Is it actually in Zone VIII with a density of 20%? Why not? If not, we must put it there.

Place Zones through Contraction and Expansion with Levels

You can bring up curves CTRL+M or Image->Adjustments->Curves at this point and create a slight S curve to increase contrast. Note the effect on tonal placement by monitoring your reference points in the Info palette. With the power of "undo" you are able to go for broke and leave your initial vision, but be clear as to why you want to do that. I often add a bit more contrast to produce the look of selenium toning, even if I reduce my base zone placement by 1/2 or 1 full zone. It is important to note that the advanced user may work with curves from beginning to end performing all of the Levels operations and contrast enhancement operations from this single interface, but it can be advantageous to work with Levels for the benefit of the histogram feedback.

At this point we have a good representation of our visualization. Zone VIII is where it should be and will print with 20% density, and Zone IV is where it should be and will print with 60% density. The negative, which we only ever saw as a positive, is developed. Or is it?

With the color sampler selected run your mouse cursor over Zone IX and Zone X. Are they acceptable? Perhaps some deviation is in order to bring an average acceptability to Zones VIII through X rather than rigidly choosing a rendering for Zone VIII at the expense of Zone X? In the traditional darkroom you would have had to wait a long time before you could truly judge such a discrepancy and then restart the entire process to make amends. But here we have the power of undo and "real time" feedback of how our input values will affect the output. You are free to make creative decisions that will not cost you hours to "re-evaluate".

Further edits can be performed. You have a baseline; a point from which to depart. But all of the possibilities, even those with analogies to traditional photography, are beyond the scope of this article, from here we can move on to printing.

Remove All Reference Points

Dodge & Burn Local Areas

Save UnSharpened Version (for later resampling)
Sharpening for specific size prints yields the best results.

Resample Unsharpened Image for Printing

Sharpening with UnSharp Mask

Note color images have sharpening issues that are separate from the Black & White image. My workflow is for Black & White.

Final Spotting

Save as Completed Size Specific Work and Print using preferred settings.

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