Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sun, 24 Jan 1999 12:52:23 -0500 (EST)
On Sat, 23 Jan 1999 Kabury@aol.com wrote:
> The CMY relate to the three primaries for watercolor pigments of blue, red and
> yellow. This is different than the three primaries for monitors of red,
> green, and blue, RGB. Then, how I see the black (or K) coming in is that if
> you were just working with watercolors, not in gum printing, you would mix
> white in with a color to make a lighter shade and black into it to get a
> darker shade. In gum printing, the paper kind of acts like the white - if the
> color is thin in a part of the image the color looks lighter. But to get the
> darker shades in gum printing you can use the black negative.
>
> In contrast to what I have seen on this list, I almost always use the black
> negative to give the image more depth and deepen the shades of color. It's
> often very critical to me in terms of how the image looks. Then, again there
> are times I don't use it because I like how it looks without it. It's a
> matter of how you want the image to look. Other times I've not used the cyan
> negative or the magenta negative. Or I've used red with the cyan negative --
> the possibilities are endless.
The to-K or not to-K question has been perplexing me, but I wonder if I
might have a clue at last. The first color-separated-by-Photoshop gum
prints I made (default CMYK separation), were so strong and bright and
complete looking as printed just with CMY I wondered how or why one would
add black.
Then I did another -- by exactly the same procedure as far as I can tell.
In fact one of the bright ones was from the same CD, opened at the same
resolution, all were the same to the eye in channels, separated by
Pagemaker, printed with the same pigments & mix for the same exposure,
etc. etc. This one looks anemic (at last a place to put black!). But what,
I'm wondering, is so different?
All that comes to mind so far is that the others were either scanned in
from opaque material on the flatbed or slides taken in broad daylight.
This one was shot by flash at night.
Well, it's a thought....& time will no doubt tell.
Meanwhile, PS to Kathy: As I was taught watercolor, adding white was a
no-no. You were supposed to simply dilute the color to get it lighter. By
the definition of those days (admittedly obsolete in everything else),
when you added white you got tempera. Certainly the character changed &
the paint lost transparency.
But if you've found a black watercolor to apply without disaster, oh
please to share that info. I've tried 8 or more -- best of the bad lot was
Rowney Ivory Black. But any further light, so to speak, you can shed on
the matter would be much appreciated.
cheers,
Judy
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