Today I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to make web JPEGs from copy shots of recent prints. Platinum prints are incredibly difficult to approximate (reproduce is out of the question) either online or on press. Scanners go nuts and make the paper texture vastly more obvious than it is in actual viewing. Copying with a digital camera (or process camera for press) does a lot better, but still presents problems. Even with a perfect custom white balance for the digital captures, the print color looks much too warm, which it turns out can be fixed by a fairly severe saturation reduction processing the Raw file. (I've found a saturation reduction is also needed for copies of oil paintings, though only about half as much).
These now come pretty close to what the actual prints look like (would look like when matted to the image area), at least on my calibrated display. Who knows what they'll turn into on the plethora of devices in use today. If you're at all interested, click on one of the pictures to get the larger and more accurate (not that it's accurate at all, just more) view.
The series is from the past couple of weeks, looking at special parts of
Steep Rock Preserve, experimenting to see how far I can take the hybrid digital/platinum process.
7 comments:
Luminous is the word!
I've always enjoyed your posts and the experimenting you do with Platinum printing. I've recently started to do some printing using an inkjet printer and was wondering if today's inkjet printers could approach a Platinum print. Could one get close with proper adjustments in a photo editor and a proper choice of paper/profiles etc?
Thanks! This is definitely a case where the pictures are "about" the light just as much as the subject matter.
Ed, you can make a really good print with today's photo quality inkjet printers of course, and you could use a matte fine art paper and color toning of monochrome output (the Epson Advanced Black and White module of their print driver is very good at this) to make a print "in the style of a platinum print," but it can't actually match the appearance of a Pt/Pd print. Inks, even pigment inks, on the surface of a coated sheet of paper can't produce the same physical object as microscopic metal particles embedded directly into the fiber of uncoated paper—which is what a Pt/Pd print is. Pt/Pd can also convey more tonal gradation—more shades of gray—especially in the highlight values.
OTOH, a wonderfully crafted digital print could certainly be "a better print" than a poorly crafted platinum print. When I make digital prints I try to find and utilize the strengths of the medium and attempt to make the best print for that medium, not try to make the digital print imitate platinum, or silver, or dye transfer, etc.
Thanks for the reply, Carl. I still have a lot to learn about printing. I do agree with your comment about producing prints that utilize the strengths of the medium. I hope to someday produce a masterfully crafted digital print.
These are lovely, and full of light. I understand that the long process: color raw file to b/w raw file to printed negative on transparent film to Pt/Pd print to copy shot back to web size (or larger?) jpeg is because the real goal is the Pt/Pd print. Do you also have a shorter process worked out for color raw file to b/w jpeg at the original resolution that preserves the feeling of light in these pictures?
Scott, if you look back at this recent post [http://workingpictures.blogspot.com/2017/10/brookside-autumn.html] these web files were made directly, not as copy shots of prints.
Either way, all the work happens in ACR. For digital platinum, once I have the file looking the way I want I drop back from ACR to Bridge and run a batch action to size the file and save as a .psd in a "pos" folder. Then go to that folder, select the file and run another batch that does all the steps to make a file ready for output and saves it to a "neg" folder. Head over there, run another batch to apply the appropriate amount of smart sharpen, then open the file and call up a printer preset for digital negs. Quicker to do than to type.
The brookside shots were again adjusted in ACR, including a light touch of split tone, then run through a "make 1280 sRGB jpg" batch.
Post a Comment