{"id":240,"date":"2011-04-24T18:56:41","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T23:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickspicscorner.com\/blog\/?p=240"},"modified":"2012-07-02T03:02:27","modified_gmt":"2012-07-02T08:02:27","slug":"frustrating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/frustrating\/","title":{"rendered":"Frustrating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red is just one of those wavelengths that frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.\u00a0 When I was shooting a lot of concerts I would have problems with blown highlights because heavy metal performers love red lights.\u00a0 There was a really good photo I got of Erik Rutan from the death metal band Hate Eternal that eventually ended up as a black and white photo because I could not get the red light on his skin properly adjusted.\u00a0\u00a0The problem, however, \u00a0isn’t just limited to the digital image on the screen, it also manifests when I’m trying to print certain red wavelengths on my Epson 2880.\u00a0 When I shot the April 2008 performance of Mushroomhead in Houston, I got a really good photo of one the vocalists (click here<\/a> to see the photo). \u00a0I was ready to use it as an image for a class project.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it cost me a lot of money in terms of paper, ink, and time only to realize that I could not get the red to print digitally\u00a0without the blown highlights.\u00a0 I ended up getting it printed through a third part using the digital chromogenic process (digitally exposing an image on color photographic paper then developing the paper as you would normally) – the professor had given his blessing on using that method when he assigned the project.\u00a0 The photographic paper properly rendered the colors and I was able to use the image.<\/p>\n

Fast foward to 2011 – I haven’t thought about it much since then as\u00a0I haven’t had any\u00a0photos\u00a0to\u00a0be printed that were flooded with red light.\u00a0\u00a0Yesterday I took\u00a0some photos of a monolithic scultpure for someone.\u00a0\u00a0As part of the composition we placed a red orchid-type flower next to\u00a0the piece and while\u00a0the\u00a0owner was cleaning off another plant I took some artsy type shots of the\u00a0flower and scultpure.\u00a0 Here is the photo that I ended up with:<\/p>\n

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Click to Embiggen<\/p><\/div>\n

As part of post processing I increased the luminosity of the red in the flowers in order to really get a good contrast against the white marble of the sculpture.\u00a0 I was pretty proud of the digital result and decided that this particular photo needed to end up in my print collection (also for sale\u00a0if anyone is interested).\u00a0\u00a0So I fired up\u00a0Photoshop, made the\u00a0adjustments to Brightness\u00a0(my printer tends to print a little darker than it appears on screen) and went to the print dialog.\u00a0 Unfortunately,\u00a0a large area of reds in the flower were out of gamut for the printer and paper\u00a0profiles.\u00a0\u00a0“Dammit!” I thought, “Not this again!” I printed a\u00a0low quality test\u00a0and the reds were blown out, as in the\u00a0subtle tonal changes were gone.<\/p>\n

So, I consulted Photoshop help and figured out how to view gamut warnings in real time when working with the images.\u00a0 As an added bonus it could\u00a0reproduce the gamuts of the various\u00a0paper ICC profiles I have installed.\u00a0 Since I primarily use luster paper (it’s a nice\u00a0middle ground between glossy, which I don’t like, and matte, which\u00a0often looks washed out) I was able to get a good idea of its limitations.\u00a0 I attempted to replace the colors.\u00a0\u00a0While I was able to save the subtle tonal changes,\u00a0the\u00a0resulting colors were not really true to what I wanted:<\/p>\n

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Click to Embiggen<\/p><\/div>\n

As you can see, the reds are now\u00a0a pinkish color.\u00a0 It doesn’t look bad, but it’s not the true color of the\u00a0flower.\u00a0\u00a0For this particular photo I wanted to stay as true to the actual colors as possible.\u00a0 What to do?\u00a0 What to do?<\/p>\n

I\u00a0looked at the other paper types I have\u00a0and tried those profiles.\u00a0 I found that with the\u00a0matte finish\u00a0papers I have (Velvet and Somerset) I got\u00a0more of the colors in gamut, but still\u00a0had a large area outside the gamut.\u00a0 \u00a0Then I realized that last week a couple of sheets of Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl inkjet paper came into my possession.\u00a0 I installed that profile and viewed the gamut warning.\u00a0 I was amazed to find that this paper had a larger gamut than the Legion papers that I had been using.\u00a0 There was still an area of reds that were out of gamut, but the area was much smaller than before.\u00a0 I opened the color replacement dialog and then found the in-gamut replacement color very closely matched my original processing:<\/p>\n

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Click to Embiggen<\/p><\/div>\n

I lost a little bit of the tonal changes, but in the final print the changes were still extremely subtle.\u00a0 I score this as a win.\u00a0 The print itself turned out great, although it is a little more glossy than I normally use, I can see this paper finding its way into my printer when the need arises.<\/p>\n

What did I learn from this?\u00a0 There are A LOT of different papers out there (which I already knew) but the differences in color gamut between the brands seems to be more than I initially thought.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the quality papers are not cheap – my Legion MOAB Lasal Luster (11 x 17) costs US$70 for 50 sheets and that’s in the\u00a0mid-range price for that size\u00a0paper.\u00a0 There is also the issue of ink costs (US$15 per cartridge for the Epson R2880 – these don’t hold much ink at all), time, and waste.\u00a0 Clearly, experimentation is going to cost a lot of money and that’s something I will only be able to do over a long time.\u00a0 If I could afford a digital chromogenic setup then I would be all set, but that’s quite the capital investment there.\u00a0 The upside of this is\u00a0I gained a bit of understanding of the printing process, a bit\u00a0more understanding of color, and learned a few more tricks in Photoshop.\u00a0\u00a0I also found that\u00a0printmaking is not something simple…\u00a0 there is a lot more to learn about this.\u00a0\u00a0What am I getting myself into?<\/p>\n

Well, that’s all for now.\u00a0 I\u00a0hope everyone is having a good Easter and I will see you all again soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Red is just one of those wavelengths that frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.\u00a0 When I was shooting a lot of concerts I would have problems with blown highlights because heavy metal performers love red lights.\u00a0 There was a really good photo I got of Erik Rutan from the death metal band Hate Eternal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}