Irony
Back years ago when I was shooting both panchromatic and infrared black and white film, it was a lengthy process to get from shooting to an image. I had the film processing down to a consistent procedure that I could largely do while sitting reading but printing was less consistent for me.
I would go into my basement/bathroom darkroom and emerge hours later with perhaps a dozen finished prints and a lot of hope I had exposed, dodged, burned and printed what I was after. Often though the prints would dry down darker than expected and I would be disappointed.
When I got my first computer, film scanner and photoshop in the mid 90’s I knew this was the way I had always wanted to go. While film affords tremendous latitude when exposing, processing and printing, what you loose there you make up for in speed, accuracy and flexibility while working in photoshop.
Now I’m able to complete an image in minutes and know with certainty that it is exactly what I will get when I print. Oops – I did neglect to mention many years of anxiety in that description between the mid 90’s and early 00’s. It took a while before there were reasonable colour management solutions and accurate monitors that made it possible to print exactly what you see on screen. But now after having this working setup for several years, I easily forget there was a time when that too was painful.