On Dec 2, 2005, at 11:34 PM, Judy Seigel wrote:
>
> Katharine points out that your "cerulean" is thalo + white, & you
> might well get the same color with thalo -- by using less of it, since
> it's a very strong color.
Which is what I meant by saying that adding white to thalo and calling
it cerulean is "a convoluted way to print thalo"
Certainly the color printed (on my monitor) looks like thalo in hue and
depth, the 15:3 version of it anyway, perhaps just a tad more
turquoise in the lighter mid-tones. I might print pthalo a bit lighter
for tricolor, because printed too dark it will overpower the other
colors and throw the color balance to cyan, (that's the thing about
tricolor, you have to consider not just how the layer looks by itself
but also how it looks combined with the other layers) but it's hard to
tell from the monitor how dark something is, and it may be that what
you've got will work perfectly; your own tests will tell much better
than my eyeballing of an electronic reproduction.
>
> As for the 11 steps, I understand that with a light enough tone you
> can cover every step, tho I've never done it -- but the darkest step
> will be quite light.
Wow, this is a remarkable claim. I can't dispute it, but I've never
seen it. But then I don't often print a step tablet during the course
of my routine gum printing, so I can't say that I haven't achieved it
without knowing it. ;-) But man, it seems like to get 21 steps of a
very light tone, the steps would have to be so close together it would
be impossible to tell them apart. Wouldn't they? But yes, that's why
I printed layers of very pale pigment for my series like "Surf" for
instance, to get a lot of very subtle tonal gradations within a short
range of light tones. But 21? I'd have to see it...
> From habit, I was thinking in terms of a full range of tone more or
> less from "D-Max" to highlight when I announced that 7 or so steps is
> "normal" or even the limit. Very forgetful/careless of me.
This is what I meant, Loris, when I said that Judy and you were talking
about different things, that she was talking about a darker pigment.
Because in order to get "DMax" in gum in one coat, you would have to
use a darker pigment than thalo. Whereas in tricolor, "DMax" is the
product of three colors overlaid, and will be darker than any of the
three separate layers.
But the use of the word "DMax" for gum goes back to the other
discussion, about gum and tonal scale. I was getting so frustrated the
other day about people not understanding what I was saying, that I've
taken a break from that thread. This is the nice thing about my new
mail program; the mail just sorts itself into threads and folders and
if I don't want to look at a thread or a folder, I don't need to (my
oldest sister's mail, for example). I see that there are 8 unread
messages in the "gum tonal scale" thread, and eventually I promise I
will read them, but not right now.
It's like the CMYK thing all over again. It took me six years to get
through the entrenched wisdom to make my point understood, that the
default Photoshop CMYK space, profiled for SWOP printing inks, doesn't
make sense to me for gum, because it's weighted toward cyan and away
from magenta and yellow. That was frustrating too, but I kept at it
until the point was finally taken. But I don't have the energy or the
patience that I had 7 years ago, so I'm going to have to think about
how much time I want to put into trying to get this point across,
particularly since it's a very narrow point and not the least bit
essential to improving anyone's gum printing printing practice; it's
exactly the kind of esoteric discussion that Judy was cautioning
against the other day.
But, the point here, the point about "DMax,"is that, as I said the
other day in that other thread, for gum the absolute darkest tone you
can print in one coat is the most concentrated mix possible of the
darkest pigment available, which could be debated but I think most
folks would say lamp black. So you're not ever going to get that dark
a tone unless you (1) print with a pigment as dark as lamp black, or
(2) print multiple layers, which (if the right pigments and
concentrations are chosen) can add to a tone as dark as lamp black.
And if you print the lamp black dark enough to get that deepest elusive
tone known as "DMax" at the bottom of the scale, you're not going to
get as many steps as if you had printed it lighter, probably for
reasons given by Clay and Judy in that thread.
Katharine
Received on Sat Dec 3 10:48:29 2005
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