Re: dark gums

[Katharine Thayer <kthayer@pacifier.com>]

On Jan 24, 2007, at 6:03 AM, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:

> > Christina, my negatives are digital inkjet. However, before  
> > reading your
> > email my plan for tomorrow was to separate the image into 3 negs-- 
> > RGB--but
> > print them all black. But after reading your advice on controlling
> > exposure
> > and pigment I think I can print one negative with a full range and  
> > get
> > what
> > I want with multiple layers. In fact, I'm realizing that that is  
> > the only
> > way to go, and that is a benefit of printing with gum.
> Ilana, for monochrome work I can't see a reason to print out  
> several negs.
>
> But heck, you never know, try it and see if it is different!  Maybe  
> you'll
> discover a new way of printing monochrome! Maybe the three negs  
> will print in different places so that you will get a more even  
> final layer...
This would hardly be a new way of printing monochromes, since I've  
been doing it this way for at least 15 years, and probably have it  
described somewhere on my website, not to speak of having described  
it here on the list more than once.  And I have a vague memory that  
I'm not the only one who has done it this way, so I'm not claiming  
that I'm the only one who has ever done it, only that it's not a new  
idea.

As I said in an earlier post on this thread, I think I prefer it to  
using one negative, because I ike the way it separates out the  
tones.  But it would depend on how the colors land in the original  
image, I suppose; it wouldn't do much if the image was all one color  
in the first place.   My images at the time I was doing a lot of this  
were such that they all had a similar kind of color distribution,  
which worked very well for separating the tones in a monochrome.  I  
was doing a lot of tricolor at the time I started doing this, and I  
automatically made color separations for every image I scanned, so it  
made sense to use the color separations when i wanted to make  
monochromes, rather than making a new black and white negative for  
the monochrome print, and I found that it worked very well.  A  
lighter pigment mix for the yellow layer, a mid pigment mix for the  
red layer, and a darker pigment mix for the cyan layer, sometimes  
altering the hue a little from layer to layer.  It seemed to me that  
it made a cleaner separation of the tones, than does just trying to  
land the tones in the right places by adjusting the exposure.  But  
whether it would be worth making separations if you don't already  
have them... that I couldn't say for sure.

Chris's idea of mixing the tones for different effects is also  
interesting.

Speaking of misregistration, once when I was tired I put the negative  
on upside down for one layer of a tricolor gum; it was a figure that  
suddenly sprouted another elbow and made a really weird, but not  
uninteresting,  distribution of color.  If you like unusual effects,  
there's another thing to try.
Katharine