Re: (Drumroll): gum prints w curved vs uncurved negs (Re: How manygum layers (Re: ferri sesquichlorati)
On Oct 26, 2006, at 6:01 AM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
Thanks Kees. Yes, I read the thread on hybridphoto last night and
found the new material on the faq, and set the points and gamma as
instructed and ran it through again. But it doesn't seem to make
any appreciable difference in the curve or in the appearance of the
negative.
I changed my mind, after looking more carefully at the curve from the
raw scan and the curve with the black and white points and the gamma
set manually, and applying them one after another to the template
itself so I could see their effect on specific values visually.
Setting the points manually does make a difference, but in the wrong
direction; it gives me a worse curve and results in a negative that
would print even flatter than the one I had before. (An offlist
correspondent thought I must be applying the curve to the negative
rather than the positive, but that's not the case).
It's been instructive to sit back and listen to answers to questions
about curves and gum. Someone wrote a while back to say that when
they use PDN with tricolor gum, the print comes out too dark, and
wondered what they were doing wrong; the answer was something like,
"Oh, yeah, that's what always happens," the recommendation being
that the inquirer just play around with variables, I forget whether
it was pigment concentration or exposure, by trial and error until
they find something that works, using the same curves. And then it
turns out that after all one doesn't use a different curve for
different pigments, as has been claimed here much in the past; one
just uses the same curve and varies the exposure (which kind of
messes with the idea that the curves are supposed to be based on a
standard printing time, doesn't it?).
So I'm inclined to think that there's not much difference between
what we're all doing; whatever kind of negative you start out with,
you still have to master printing gum, and no matter what kind of
negative you start out with, you're still going to be "fiddling with
it until you get what you want in the print."
Katharine
On Oct 26, 2006, at 12:22 AM, Kees Brandenburg wrote:
Katherine, there is some (new) info on scanning the print onthe
ChartThrob faq.
http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000544.html
kees
On 26-okt-2006, at 5:52, Katharine Thayer wrote:
Hmm, he doesn't mention this on the link, but you could be
right. I did have the scanner stuff turned off. At the moment
I'm tired and have other things to do, and I guess I don't see
the point of spending any more time with it, since I have yet to
see the advantage over just printing the file as is. If someone
could show me this great wonderfulness that's supposed to come
from these curves, that would be one thing, but I just haven't
seen any sign of it yet. But thanks for the suggestion,
Katharine
On Oct 25, 2006, at 2:44 PM, Michael Koch-Schulte wrote:
When you scanned the stepwedge did you adjust the black points
and white points? How might be the key. Kevin Bjorke recommends
doing this on a thread running on hybridphoto.com. Just where
might take a little guesswork. I'd try scanning with all
automatic settings turned OFF in the scanner software/driver and
using CS2 to manually set them. Try trimming the black point so
it touches the 100 % square and the white point so it touches
the 0 % and then run that through the second part of the
program. That way you're eliminating the extra head room at the
dark and light end of the scanner's range. The print looks flat
as a pancake. The blacks are grey and there's no detail in the
middle.
~m
----- Original Message -----
From: Katharine Thayer
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 2:43 PM
Subject: (Drumroll): gum prints w curved vs uncurved negs (Re:
How many gum layers (Re: ferri sesquichlorati)
Okay, I've posted a gum print made with a neg (from ChartThrob)
geared to fit my emulsion and printing conditiions, next to a print
made from the same file, no curve.
I printed several templates and generated several curves from the
same emulsion last night, because being a statistician, I
needed to
convince myself that the curve for a particular emulsion would be
reliable and robust (in other words that minute variations in how I
mixed the emulsion or coated the paper or whatever would not
skew the
curve; this seemed to be the case, in other words the curve does
seem
to be robust to unessential differences. But I used up so much
emulsion printing those templates that I had to mix up some more
pigment mix this morning, and so I printed another template and
generated another curve this morning for the new mix. Even
though it
was essentially the same mix, I wanted to be sure that the curve I
was using was generated for the exact mix I was using. Again, the
curve looked very much the same as the other curves.
I made sure that I had the positives and negatives straight (his
directions and labels are helpful in that regard) and the
"corrected"
file looked very much like his example of a "corrected" file, so I
don't think I did something really stupidly wrong, but if I did,
someone can tell me.
The curve is not a drastic curve, and the two negatives differ from
each other not at all drastically, but I could tell just by looking
at the corrected negative that it would print flatter and darker
than
the uncurved one, and so it did.
Both prints and all the templates were exposed at 2 minutes, but I
developed the "curved" print an hour longer than the other one (if
I'd developed it the same amount of time as the other one, it would
have looked even worse by comparison, but I wanted to give it every
chance of turning into something, so I gave it some leeway).
I spent something like 8 hours of my time and a bunch of paper and
transparencies to end up with a worse print. I don't get it.
http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/Curve.html
Katharine
On Oct 25, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Ender100@aol.com wrote:
> Hi Katherine,
>
> Whatever works for you is the way to go.
>
> Mark
>
> In a message dated 10/25/06 10:50:56 AM, kthayer@pacifier.com
writes:
>
>
>>
>> > " Otherwise, why not just start with an image, invert it
and make
>> > a negative of any unknown density without a curve and keep
fiddling
>> > with it until you get what you want in the print."
>> >
>> > Best Wishes,
>> > Mark Nelson
>>
>>
>> Well, indeed, why not. Like Keith, this is exactly my
approach and
>> as Keith says, it works fine. And as Chris showed last week, it
>> works good for her too. Her tricolor gum made from inverted
uncurved
>> channels was cyan-biased, but that's not a function of the
curves,
>> that's a function of the selectiion of pigment concentration
of the
>> three pigments in relation to each other. So I guess my
answer to
>> Mark's question "why not?" is, beats me! Seems like a
perfectly
>> reasonable approach to me.
>>
>> But since Charles posted the link for ChartThrob yesterday,
I've been
>> playing around with generating curves some myself, and like
Keith, I
>> have to say, so far I like the "no curve" approach better too.
>>
>> Recently, Mark, you said that a beginner could save a lot of
time,
>> money, and materials by investing in a system for generating
curves,
>> or better yet, two systems. At the time, that didn't make
sense to
>> me, because the time and materials you "waste" in the beginning
>> learning to print gum are "wasted" in the process of learning to
>> print gum, not in the process of generating negatives, and
you still
>> have to learn how to print gum, no matter how you generate your
>> negatives. So I'm not sure how it would make any
difference. And
>> besides, the way gum works, there's very little waste;
there's almost
>> no print that can't be salvaged; pigment stain is the one
exception,
>> and curves or no curves don't have any bearing on pigment stain
>> But I didn't think there was any point in arguing further, so
I let
>> that thread die without saying so.
>>
>> But now, after an evening of printing value templates, I
have to say
>> I think the savings are in the other direction; you save more
>> materials by printing gum. At least when you're actually
printing
>> images, you have a print to work with and do something with, and
>> chances are you can do something with it, even if you didn't
get it
>> "right" on the first printing. But a template of value
patches is
>> just a template of value patches. And if I was really going
to do
>> this, I'd have to do it for every single different pigment I
ever
>> use, at every concentration I use it at, at every environmental
>> condition (humidity, particularly)... I would be doing
nothing but
>> printing templates for the rest of my life, and there's not a
thing
>> you can do with the stupid things, except generate curves. Talk
>> about waste of materials! I'd rather be printing gum.
>>
>> I can't say yet whether the resulting curves would be an
improvement
>> over the uncurved negatives; I'm not even there yet Will
report in
>> due time with a comparison.
>> Katharine
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