U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: two questions about gum

Re: two questions about gum



On Sep 26, 2007, at 6:18 AM, Marek Matusz wrote:

Charles,
I would say you should adjust your curve and not cut your pigments. Cutting down on pigment will result in whimpy and grey looking print.
Since there's no standard for how much pigment to use per layer in tricolor gum, I can't see how it makes sense to characterize the result of cutting down pigment as a general statement. Cutting down on pigment would result in a wimpy and grey looking print only if the pigment was at the right concentration in the first place, in which case it would make no sense to cut down on the pigment. My recommendation for cutting down on pigment only applies to cases where the layers are overpigmented in the first place, resulting in a too dark print (where overexposure has been ruled out by calibrating the exposures first) . Reducing the pigment on a dark print like this would result in a bright, balanced print, not in a wimpy grey print at all. Maybe I should try to print such a print, to show what I mean.
kt