Kuntz's presentation was chock-full of good information, but at the speed with which it was delivered, you had to have a good working knowledge of Photoshop to get the most out of it.

To gain complete control of color separations, Kuntz decided when the switch to 100 percent digital photos was made, shut down the Scietx system used for producing seps and add the Scitex workers to the photo department, which became responsible for all separations. A gradual transition was made, with one person at a time being thoroughly trained. But the bulk of Kuntz' discussion was tips on processing digital photos in Photoshop. First consistent color must be obtained from the cameras, and this involves shooting a color check swatch with each assignment. Since lighting conditions vary greatly, this makes accurate color calibration possible, and also uncovers cameras that are flawed and unable to produce the proper quality consistently.

Using two brand-new Macintosh monitors and a G3 PowerBook, Kuntz ran through a Photoshop process to help get excess cyan out of digital photos and also how to adjust the white point without losing detail. The audience also learned that heat is poorly photographed by digital cameras and flames are usually in need of a color adjustment, as well as how to remove grain using Photoshop channels. All-in-all a most successful presentation, which was confirmed by the number of people still asking questions well past the 10 a.m. cutoff.

English gave a well-illustrated talk with slides and tear sheets from the DEMOCRAT & CHRONICLE's coverage of the huge blizzard of 1999. His paper has been all-digital since the summer 1997, so the experience was a big help in covering the blizzard, when photographers couldn't get to the office, they just filed digitally.

There's an "embedded value" in digital photography, English said, declaring it now "a newspaper standard." With a big photo project, editing the images can be done as the project moves along, minimizing the end-of-project logjams. He said that after the conversion, he estimated saving $65,000 a year on chemicals alone.

The cost per seat for a photographer under the old system (with film and chemicals was $33,000 a year, but now down to $21,000 for a digital seat, and this includes providing two cameras (one for backup) and a PowerBook (he didn't say the generic laptop) for each photog.

English stressed the importance of "empowering photographers through [the] design of the digital system and how to assist the photo staff to embrace major change."

There are many important considerations involving workflow, the production system and all important training, but these issues can be mitigated by what he calls "layered learning," complete training from the inside out.

For a more complete summary of English's presentation, he suggests visiting the paper's ftp site, where many relevant documents can be downloaded: ftp://205.232.42.3/pub/photo_dept/digital_material/digits/index.html.

The final presenter, Chris Ritter, was a good-old-boy with an edge that came from running the pre-press department and serving as the director of photography for the Jonesboro, Ark., daily before his self-developed expertise (beginning in 1995) in the digital world got him a job with AP. Ritter described how to change traditional photojournalists work habits in the digital age or how to overcome the "Mama don't take my Kodachrome away" syndrome.

What's needed is a decent amount of transition time and the necessity to "spend dollars for training." On-site is the best, where the trainers can "come in and spend some time with the staff."

Ritter also praised the training at the Poynter Institute's Visual Edge (co-sponsored by the National Press Photographers Association) as "the best" for overall immersion. He called it "digital photography boot camp" and if you didn't understand digital after a week there, you would never get it and should "seek other employment."

Ritter's was the most sound-byte filled of any of the presenters, with him playfully dissing photographers as "lazy beasts" who must be reminded not to simply "play with an image in Photoshop -- the more you distort, the less information you have to publish," he said.

He had good slides of digital photos that couldn't be saved by Photoshop, and described the pitfalls of under- and over-exposure and of bad framing of digital photos that force photo editors to make radical crops that get rid of too much digital information.

Ritter also touted the new voice annotation available in many of the new model digital cameras, but to assure acquaintances that "you're not crazy for talking to a 35mm camera."

And NAA wasn't crazy for breaking the session up the way they did, either This was one five-ring circus that made a virtue of everything happening at once.

-- George Powell