15th Anniversary
Desktop Darkroom, Inc.
Estab. 1989 We celebrated the 15th Anniversary of Desktop Darkroom last month, and although some may say a mere 15 years is no big thing, in professional digital photography and lab service it really is.

Fifteen years ago there were no professional digital cameras. Desktop Darkroom started in business selling digital systems based on scanners.

Major manufacturers in graphics included RasterOps, which dramatically brought 24-bit color to the desktop*, Syquest, which popularized portable data storage, Truvel that brought us affordable high resolution reflective scanning, and Barneyscan, the company that invented the photographer's film scanner before there were any printers that could make use of the images. All of those companies are gone now. They pioneered superbly but were not able to change as quickly as the industry did.

The Macintosh was the only computer that could be used for graphics and our big new Mac IIx allowed for use of up to 8 MB RAM. If you shopped long and hard you could find a 100 MB hard drive for just a little over a thousand dollars. But when the cameras arrived, only Macs could run them. We loved to tell the story that even IBM¹s own product ads had to be produced on a Mac. However, Apple was busy self-destructing via new CEO's and procedures every few months and lost their place in pro digital photography.

Then, about 10 years ago, came the first professional level digital camera: the Kodak DCS 460. And we were off and running. Desktop Darkroom had a booth at a big trade show just weeks after the first cameras were released and at that event virtually everyone from the Kodak visited our booth, made notes about our beautiful digital prints, and watched our demonstrations to learn more about their own product. What fun.

Our early booths always featured huge prints from digital images to help us answer the inevitable: "Is it really good enough for my work?" We would point to strands of hair on the giant prints as part of our answer. A year or two later we could refer people to the Exhibits and challenge them to tell us which 12 of the beautiful works found there were digital.

It was not long before we had converted many of the "big name" seminar presenting photographers to digital and they became our evangelists. It was our good fortune that they liked us, loved our service and and became excited about this future they were entering. So they spread the word. Fast. (We are still the preferred source for most of them.)

Photographers who specialized in high school seniors were first to convert to digital. They loved the montages and other graphic possibilities that Photoshop made possible, when it arrived. Photoshop had not yet been discovered by Adobe or even named Photoshop 15 years ago; we sold it only bundled with the Barneyscan. Back then, when we gave presentations or demonstrated digital photography or Photoshop, people would stand and applaud. We did too. What remarkable new tools were being made available to us.

Next to go digital were general portrait photographers and various portrait specialists. The photographers all got dye sublimation printers with their systems because the labs weren't digital then. Some photographers would spray coat their prints to achieve print longevity. The UV coating of prints today was not yet available.

To convert studios to digital, Desktop Darkroom techs went on-site everywhere in the U.S. for the installation of our integrated systems and to provide training. The photographers were all very excited. No one bought just a camera or just a scanner; they all knew there were wrong choices and a learning curve involved and they bought complete systems including support and training.

The price was high but virtually all of the photographers who changed over early did extremely well. Their businesses boomed so the matter of cost was soon a moot point. They had new found advantages that made them a hot ticket. And the early comers were very enthusiastic. Some said they had grown tired of photography before but this "digital magic" gave them new life and interest.

There were no low-cost alternatives and in hindsight, it clearly seems that this worked to our advantage because we did not have the problem of trying to convince photographers not to buy cameras for "price" only and wind up with systems that were below their needs and that included no support. We included support from Day One.

Commercial photographers jumped aboard digital early, especially those involved with catalog production. Some used slow, awkward scanning backs and still praised the speed of the digital process; it took steps out of the production process and was amazing to them. Event systems became hot, first for those who already did things like Santa-in-the-mall or class reunions and soon this category took off like a shot. Digital virtually created a new mini-industry. To us, "event photography" came to mean printing on-site and, almost always, with graphics being added to the images on-the-fly. Polaroid level quality soon became a faint memory and hundreds of new niches were found in events.

Next came sports and youth. Designing systems for seniors and other portrait photographers had been relatively easy but sports and dance were something else. We didn't know enough about the workflow and problems involved in large group work. Therefore, to learn we started a studio and began doing sports photography ourselves. It took a while, but the end result was the development of a terrific software program, a sports and youth procedures manual, the establishment of the Digital Sports Photography Network (DSPN), and the design of graphic templates so everyone wouldn't have to invent that same wheel.

Once launched, sports has been a good and fast-growing category. We thought of franchising the sports system but decided to leave total control with the photographers instead. The jury is still out on that decision because some photographers decide not to follow proven steps with proven equipment, graphics and backups and they go out instead with inferior equipment and operating methods. Others have been remarkably successful. Desktop Darkroom concentrates fully on selling and supporting the equipment and systems while the Lab provides their services.

Then came schools. What remarkable advantages digital has brought to that work. Digital can make it almost impossible to mis-identify students; it can utilize bar code scanning for fail-safe organization, and it prepares images for I.D. cards, yearbooks and automated processing at the lab. As good digital should, the school systems reduce the amount of work and decrease turnaround time and errors.

Finally, came the wedding photographers. They were last because they needed both quality and a high ISO speed. For years we could give them either the quality or the speed but not both in the same camera. Now there are wedding photographers using many different cameras and brides are often specifying that their weddings be shot digitally. The public has learned of the advantages.

The founding of Desktop Digital Lab was a major landmark. It is a separate company which, as far as we know, was the first anywhere to be 100 percent digital and it may still be. No film has ever been processed there. The digital focus and knowledge base from designing systems quickly put them well ahead of the pack. And they grow daily now and introduce new digital improvements regularly.

Please let us add that Desktop Darkroom was blessed from the beginning with outstanding staff members who like what they do and like the photographers they work with on the phone or in person. Without a top rated staff, we would be just a "box pusher operation."

We also send sincere thanks to the hundreds of you who have bought equipment, integrated systems and services from us over the years. Thanks for the sales. Thanks for the kind comments you have made about us, for spreading the word, and for understanding that our support and system knowledge has value to you well beyond price alone.

The outstanding observation of this brief review of our history is that the world became "digital" in only about 12 years. That's why we consider 15 years such a long time.

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Editor's Notes:
(1) We would love to hear your stories about the early days of desktop digital. Your memories are history now. Please e-mail any comments or memories to jluter@desktopdarkroom.com and we will post some on our website.

(2) Yes, we know that some film is still in use and will be for a number of years. But no one is asking us whether digital has really arrived any more. As for our businesses, no film has ever been used in the equipment business, the lab business or the studio. We joke that we don't believe in film. But in truth we do. We remember it fondly.

* The word "desktop" refers to the cost of the process as well as size. For instance, the RasterOps 24-bit color boards were introduced at around $5,000; whereas 24-bit color had been available earlier on color systems in the $350,000 range. All manufacturers mentioned in this article were pioneers for the desktop market.