Re: How to apply curves in PS for digital negatives...

Dan,
I must have not been a very good student in your class. I apply my curves to
the negative. I found it easier to do especially for the tricolor
separations for gum. I can fine tune it easier and look at my RGB channels
at the same time. Anyways, perhaps the best curve to start with is a
straight line as it will tech you the most about your process. I might have
a generic curve for a process, but evry picture will be modified to suit my
particular vision. Perhaps it is like printing B&W. I always started with a
straight print on a multicontrast paper with no2 filter and then decided how
my paaper curve should be modified to a fixed negative curve. With most alt
processes our paper curve is fixed and we vary negative.
Introducing drastic curves might lead to artifacts like bading, etc so the
order might be important. I work only in 16bit files and never found that
the order matters (actually I never see any artifacts).

Just a thought for this after Thanksgiving shopping day

>From: Dan Burkholder <fdanb@aol.com>
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: Re: How to apply curves in PS for digital negatives...
>Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:17:29 -0600 (CST)
>
>Christina asked:
>
> > I mean do I first convert the image to a negative and then apply the
> > > curve, or first apply the curve and then convert into a negative?
> > The result is different.
>
>Though you could tailor your procedure to work either way, for most of
>us it's more intuitive to apply the curve BEFORE inverting the image
>into a negative. For one thing, you get to see how the curve actually
>bends the tones in your image, something that's harder to see when
>applied to a negative.
>
>Sometimes the order in which you do things is more important than at
>others. If you are using a colorized negative scheme to create your
>diginegs, you could get into trouble were you to invert at the wrong
>stage. Inverting a red-orange image would suddenly give you a blue-cyan
> negative; this color would pretty much do nothing for most UV
>sensitive processes.
>
>And remember, it's all well and good that a web site offers curves. But
>they vary from printer to printer and from photographer to photographer.
>Any "stock" curve should be regarded as a starting point from which you
>fine-tune its shape to achieve the ideal print tonality.
>
>Hope this helps and Happy Holidays!
>
>Dan
>
>--
>www.DanBurkholder.com
>www.TinyTutorials.com
>
Received on Sat Nov 26 15:00:32 2005