More scanning, this one from a 2011 8x10-inch negative. I'd been thinking of using a 7x17 panoramic shot I made of this theater, but then realized that with the theater name "Big Sky," I really should go with this wide-angle 8x10 shot that includes much more of that big Wisconsin sky than the skinny pan shot.
2 comments:
Carl, are scans for the book done any differently than you would do a scan for a digital negative or perhaps a large digital print?
Lyle, no difference in the scan phase, in fact I'm only making new scans where I find a problem with existing ones. 16-bit grayscale with "full information"—a smooth histogram with plenty of empty headroom and footroom. Then mode change to rgb and use a Curves Adjustment Layer to get the tonal range exactly where I want it. After that, I'm making proof/work/study prints at repro size from rgb files printed through the Advanced Black&White driver on the Epson. But the files for the book will use the "duotone" function of Photoshop. I have to learn how to use this. One nuisance is that it is based on 8-bit grayscale, and in grayscale the Curves dialog is backwards, highlights left, dark tones right, which throws off my whole visual sense until I get used to dealing with it. Though it may only be needed to set the parameters for the tritone treatment, with the esthetic judgement of the picture's tonal range already established. A purely technical file preparation step. Part of the basic price estimate from the printers will be a press proof of a single sheet that I'll load up with a bunch of small images that will test different tritone treatments on high-key, low-key, and even-distributon pictures, along with several different levels of output sharpening. Evaluation of that will determine how the files will be prepared. At that point, the real work should be over and they can be run through a batch action.
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