Re: curves and gum and Christopher James book
Kees, I want to apologise again to Christina. it was realy neanderthal on my part to say what I did to her. I didn't try it but I know about Micheals work. The reason I didn't try it, is I don't have the right version of PS for one. If one as to buy some specific version of software every time one want's to try something out, well you can see where I'm going with this. The other reasons why this approach is not like my dream is that this system ask you to figure out by yourself the white producing color and then you need to make a print with the colorised steptablet, then you give this to Charthrob and a the first curve is created for you and then you have to test it out and again and again until you get it right. It takes away some of the burden off for the user but not all of it. The technical reason why both methods can get away by using the linearisation thing is rather complicated but I'll try to explain it as simply as I can. When you are ask to measure a step of a step wedge on an alt-print, say the scan print is on screen and you move the mouse over the step, the value, values in fact are all over the place and you are forced to average out those variation by some mean. But this means implies a serious problem, say we make a small square image and we give it the color red (255,0,0), if you move the mouse over this square you will have the same value where ever the mouse is over the square, right. Then you print this square image on a transparent material, Pictorico or whatever, then you scan this transparent and open it, if you move the mouse again over the square you will see that the value(s) is nothing but uniform again, this is because the printer prints dots of ink, not of a red color but of various ink colors and your good scanner picks up all those tiny variations. Next if you would use this colored square as a negative to make an alt print, and make a scan again you would see the values going even more over the place. The average over the alt print square maybe a single number but the reality is that the actual values are spread both under and above this number. We start with a single value, say 127 on our original and it gets printed as severals on the alt-print, a value close to 127, say 130 will also translate into severals and it is almost certain that you wont be able to disthinguish between the 2 most of the time. All this to say that the linearisation problem is hidden by this spreading of values it doesn't mean it's not a problem. Knowing this and say I like my original subtle variation in the clouds or where ever, if you don't do something to compensate for these combined problems, you can be assured these subtilities will be lost in your alt-prints. This is also the reason why I say that each original as to be treated individually, some will need compensation in the highlights, some in the shadows, etc. These compensation will depend on the process used, the materials used, especially the paper and on your habilities to be consistant in your workflow. Some folks will say this is ART, ok it's fine, live long and prosper, but I suspect these folks have learned all this intuitively and it's become a second nature for them to treat each image differently to give it some SOUL as they say. Which ever way you look at it, these systems are all but TECHY, it's still very close to the trial and error approach. I'll add I never said they are not usefull, I'm just saying they are not HITECH, nothing more nothing less. Regards, Yves ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kees Brandenburg" <ctb@zeelandnet.nl> To: <alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca> Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 5:22 AM Subject: Re: curves and gum and Christopher James book > Yves, did you ever try chartthrob? That allready comes close to the > first part of your 'program wishes'. > > http://www.botzilla.com/blog/archives/000544.html > http://www.inkjetnegative.com/images/RNP/quick_guide_to_making_digital_ne.ht m > > kees > > > Here is an idea of the kind of tool most computer nerds like me would > > consider hitech. Let's say we have determined the exposure time at > > another > > stage. One would make a single test print (1) and make a scan of it, > > you > > then give this scan to a program which would read the scan and extract > > information from it automatically................
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