U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: Three tricolor prints

Re: Three tricolor prints



Thanks Marek. I don't like PY 150 as a tricolor pigment; I do like PY110 (have printed tricolor with it for at least 15 years) which is the most transparent yellow I know, and as I said, I've recently changed my way of printing which involves printing blue first instead of last. I haven't decided yet how well I like it; I realize that I find it much easier to balance colors by printing the blue last, but this is an interesting challenge for now. So in the meantime, I'll just go back to PY110. Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Katharine



On Oct 16, 2007, at 2:20 PM, Marek Matusz wrote:

Katharine,

Just a short comment on the pigments that you use. While PY97 is a very nice primary yellow (this was my first yellow pigment to experiment with) it is only semi-transparent in my experience as well. There are a couple ways around it. If you print with registration pins you can print it first. If you print with light registration print it on top of blue with magenta last. This way the yellow semitransparent cast can be eliminated by additional blue. Try experimenting with PY150 , nickel azo yellow(I use Daniel Smith). It is a very strong and very transparent yellow, but much different in hue then PY97.
Marek

> Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:44:25 -0700
> From: kthayer@pacifier.com
> Subject: Three tricolor prints
> To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
>
> Hi Friends,
> A while back, I posted, just for fun, two tricolor prints as part of
> my ongoing investigation of curves for gum; one of them didn't come
> out well because as it turned out, the print settings were wrong and
> the color applied to the negative was off. I reprinted the
> separations using the right print settings, but haven't got around
> to printing them on gum yet, although I'm looking forward to seeing
> the corrected print.
>
> Instead of printing those separations, I printed separations from a
> known image, the famous Adobe calibration image with Carmen Miranda
> and fruit basket hat, to more clearly make my earlier point (quoted
> at the bottom below) that curves and calibrations should change only
> the tonality of an image, not the hue ranges of the colors. (And
> perhaps also to make the point that there wasn't anything wrong in
> general with my curves or with the method I use for generating
> curves, as was suggested in that earlier discussion.)
>
> Just to make sure everyone understands, I'm just sharing work in
> progress here; I'm making no claims that these images are perfect;
> either that the color balance is perfect or that the curves are
> perfect, nor am I drawing any conclusions or asking anyone to draw
> conclusions from them; they are just rough prints made very quickly
> and not very carefully, to get a general idea of how these curves
> "feel" to me.
>
> In running test prints, I discovered that the pigment mixes that
> had given me good tricolor prints with greyscale separations were too
> concentrated for the colored and curved negatives, so I lightened the
> mixes somewhat; lightening them on the fly I didn't balance them
> perfectly and will fix that before I print this pigment combination
> again. I'm finding that I don't like the PY97, ; I want a more
> transparent yellow since my current practice involves printing yellow
> last, and the PY97 leaves a film of opacity over the darker colors,
> even though it's not a particularly opaque pigment as yellows go. So
> I'll probably go back to PY110.
>
> I wouldn't make too much of small differences in colors that appear
> in the different prints; this could be a result of inattention to
> development times or to scanning inconsistencies, at any rate
> shouldn't be taken as being an inherent characteristics of the
> different types of curves. And the curves are just as they came out
> from ChartThrob, with minimal smoothing; I've done nothing yet toward
> honing the curves to perfection.
>
> http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/Tricolor_ole_comp.html
>
> Katharine
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Oct 5, 2007, at 9:10 AM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
>
> > A note re color balance:
> >
> > Note that in these two prints, though the incorrect printer
> > settings resulted in a print that seems to have a film over it, the
> > actual colors are the same as in the print printed by the greyscale
> > separations, simply muted because of the incorrect separations.
> > The hues should not change; if the pigments are correctly balanced
> > in the first place, calibrations such as introducing a colorized
> > negative, introducting correct curves, and so forth should change
> > only the tonal relationships, not the color balance. If the color
> > balance is off in the first place, it should be corrected by
> > balancing the pigments, not by trying to correct the imbalance
> > using curves.
> >
> > kt
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >> On Sep 25, 2007, at 4:54 PM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
> >>
> >> http://www.pacifier.com/~kthayer/html/tricolorcomp.html
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
>


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