Technology is developing rapidly and has made quite a huge impact. A New York City photo developing company named LTI- Lightside has been through many changes because of technology.
LTI- Lightside opened in the 1980s and in those days mostly focused on processing slide film, which was the industry standard for professional photography at the time. This has changed with digital photography.
August Pross, the owner of LTI Lightside, said that these days, LTI- Lightside, offers a wide range of services to photographers and their clients. It processes film (color, negative slides and black and white), makes color and black & white prints from negatives, scans film to make digital files, color corrects and retouches digital image files using software like Photoshop, makes inkjet and photographic prints from digital files, and provides framing services.
Mr. Pross said, “Basically we help photographers with every stage of the photographic process after they take the picture. We can take their image and deliver a framed and mounted print suitable for exhibition in a gallery or museum or deliver a fully retouched and formatted file to a magazine for print in a news story or as advertising. Sometimes we are the photographer too, using cameras instead of scanners to copy images and make digital files.”
Mr. Pross added, “Digital photography has changed the industry tremendously and our company is no exception. In the past, when everything was shot on film, every photographer needed a lab with the people and equipment necessary to process their film and make prints. Developing film is a sensitive process and it doesn’t take much to ruin someone’s negatives forever. Now that almost all photography is digital, photographers don’t use labs as frequently…. Computers have increased people’s productivity to the point where one person can do tasks that used to require many people and as a consequence the photo industry employs far fewer people than it once did.”
With all these changes to the photo technology world, profits for LTI- Lightside have decreased. Shrinking profits have been a problem across the industry as the technology to produce photographs has become more widely available. August Pross believes that LTI will stay in business because the workers are friendly and hardworking people.