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
PDNPrint Forum at Yahoo
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www.MarkINelsonPhoto.com