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

--- Michael Koch-Schulte <mkochsch@shaw.ca> wrote:
> I look at many of the curves in the curves area of
> alternativephotography.com and just roll my eyes. Half of them look totally
> wrong to begin with and other half give you no details on how there were
> produced, what printer, what paper, inks, times et al. No one has mentioned
> so far, although it's been said many times, that applying a generic curve
> like this will probably only produce mediocre results -- if you're lucky. To
> truly reap the benefits of the curve function you have to print YOUR OWN
> step tablets so you can match the tones from your output (i.e. the final
> VDB) to the tones produced on your digital negative output. For all you know
> this curve was a VDB produced on a piece of paper towel and developed in
> creek water. Nothing wrong with that except that maybe it's not your brand
> of paper towel or you live on a different creek. You need to learn how to
> produce your own curves. You can buy into someone's system or develop your
> own as I did. For starters, get a piece of graph paper and map out where 5,
> 10, 20, 30...80, 90, 95 and 100 per cent black on your negatitve printed on
> your final output. What you'll find is that the relationship is not linear.
> Create a table from your results and make a curve based on that. This is
> where understanding of the process begins.

Michael -

I am sure that you are right and have actually printed several 100 box step
tablets on different papers. It definitely allows one to see how things
respond.

Cheers -

george

Handmade Photographic Images - http://www.GLSmyth.com
DRiP Investing - http://DRiPInvesting.org

                
__________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/
Received on Sun Nov 27 14:52:12 2005