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Ask HN: Is there a chemical darkroom emulator for Linux

4 points by roomey ↗ HN
I used to have my own little darkroom for doing manual photography.

I could pick the film, develop it myself. Pick the photo paper. Use the enlarger to expose, focus, burn, shade, double expose etc. etc.

It was all very intuitive. I have a photo of a tree and I want the nice silvery white you get with it and the rich blacks, and I am looking for a tool or something where I can essentially emulate the chemical darkroom process.

I am ok with GIMP and Darktable but I don't know how to get them to act the same as, for example, choosing a specific type of photo paper, or leaving it in the developer a bit longer.

I have tried to search for something like this but I can find nothing. Thank you!

8 comments

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h2odragon
GIMP has the tools to do anything you could do in a darkroom (and in color no less). finding those tools and figuring out how to use them is an infamous bitch.

I did a little darkroom work a long time ago, i dont remember and couldn't characterize what the effects of different papers or overdeveloping would be, now. The digital generation would express it with a different vocabulary, and it seems to me what you need is a translator/ phrasebook.

My search results [1] make me suspect the actual techniques of "darkroom effects" are lost knowledge now.

[1] http://faculty.purchase.edu/michael.bell-smith/cwd_gte_2012/...

roomey
Yes, I think GIMP probably can do what I need, the issue as ever is how to go about getting there.

There is a particular selenium look I'm trying to get, it bring out the highlights in tree bark really well, giving them an almost shiny silver grey appearance.

Not sure how to emulate this in GIMP

h2odragon
Edge detection / highlighting and color banding, maybe?

"Selenium look" ... forgive me but even when every small town newspaper had a darkroom, how common a phrase was that? You might need to write a lexicon of what you're talking about just to help preserve some of that knowledge for the world.

roomey
http://photo-reactive.blogspot.com/2010/11/selenium-surprise...

This is an ok page about it.

If you go to a black and white photo gallery you will see examples usually.

I know I can't reproduce it exactly (because it's to do with the actual silver in the paper), but I thought there would be a way to imitate these darkroom processes a bit more.

Edit: ah actually they say the scans dont do it justice. It's a beautiful look, if you can get to a gallery have peek and see if you can see what I'm talking about

navjack27
Hopefully the picture you have is a raw dng or similar or you might have a rough time doing what you want.
roomey
No, android jpeg of course :)