U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: the look of tricolor vs CMYK

Re: the look of tricolor vs CMYK



Title: Re: the look of tricolor vs CMYK
A few notes from the past (early 20th century) on the work of the "gummers".

"In the prints exhibited by this gum-water-colorists there is not to be found, even coincidentally, a single pure white, and as to his 'three-color bichromated water-color prints,' I sincerely believe he has taken up the wrong profession."

"During the second half of April the public has seen many exhibitions of prints made with the gum-bichromate process. These photographs include all manner of subject motifs: architecture, landscapes, sea-scapes, figures studies, and portraits. It seems that in photography the modern current is to avoid detail in the print as much as possible and to make the observer forget that he is looking at a photography."

"It seems that photography has passed its true borders, and entered a new field of reproduction, gum-bichromate being the  causes of this phenomenon. Such work makes the production of the negative a useless and superfluous step."

"The day is fast approaching when the making of a gum bichromate print will be as socially unacceptable as belching or the release in public of of other bodily reliefs."

Perhaps these comments from the past will put some perspective on the current hair-splitting as to the nature of true gum prints.

Sandy King




At 10:41 AM -0500 1/31/07, Ender100@aol.com wrote:
Gum Print is fine with me  hehehehe

In a message dated 1/31/07 7:48:48 AM, Keith@GumPhoto.com writes:

Mark,

 

I call them gum prints.   I'm pretty much an Occam's Razor sort of person.  Regardless of how the negatives are produced or what goes on the paper, they are gum prints.  If the end result looks like a "true" color photograph or a charcoal drawing, well, it's all there in the final work and one really doesn't;t have to go to extremes to explain it to the viewer.  Judy makes a couple of good points in her reply, the most important being that rules are tiresome in alt (although in my reply to her, "rules" or maybe more accurately "media descriptions" are sometimes demanded in the marketplace.)

 

In any event, people reading this thread will interpret differently..  Some may interpret "tri-color" as being made from RGB-separated negatives.  My negatives come from a combination of CMYK and RGB and might include something as specialized as a negative that is produced from the 80% difference between the blue channel and the inverse of the magenta channel as defined in the Calculations function of Photoshop or a "spot" channel that included only the turquoise in the original non-separated image.  So I might start out with 7 negatives, but the end result might use three or four or all seven negatives to apply the same gray pigment.  So what do you call that?  I call it a "gum print".  And I call it that even if it happens to also use a cyano or vandyke layer in the mix. 

 

Keith






Best Wishes,
Mark Nelson

Precision Digital Negatives - The System
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www.MarkINelsonPhoto.com