PrintCrafting 2:

Katelynn's Six! Christmas 2015 - The print

Okay, all sorts of challenges are wift-ing out of the PrintCraft project process. And most of them are looking back at you in Katelynn's Six! up there. It perfectly matched every nuance of what I saw on my monitor... AFTERWARD! Uh-huh seems I used Adobe 1998 as my primary color work space as I worked on this image in Photoshop. And I was pretty happy with the result...

Catelynn's 6!: The Original

And since I worked on this on my carefully calibrated iMac monitor. And I tested this image on my iPhone, iPod, and a couple of Mac Pros. They all showed me that image immediately above.The colors are subtly but DISTINCTLY different from the "The Print" at the start of this essay (BlogEssay?). 

So, where'd the ethereal light come from in the print? Unintentionally it seems. Because in converting the image for print on my new Epson P-800, I used the profile for the printer and Epson's Premium High Gloss paper. And POOF! the colors shifted. When I did the hard proofs, the images both at 4X6" and 8X11.5 were exactly matched to the print version at the top. 

Now... It's important that WYSIWYG happens. Important? No - critical. So, now that I can match the monitor to the paper, I need to match the monitored image to the printer, not a capricious gamma shift. As you can see I've not even bought 13X19" or 19X24" sheets. In fact, I'm still holding onto the Epson super premium paper sampler I got with the printer. In the interim I've been popping out 4X6" tests with a final 8X11.5" of each on that premium high gloss double weight. Best way to test the sparkle, right?

Last post handled the color space differently and the colors of that row-block in Lancaster were almost spot on the monitor. Almost. That's why I redid all of the color management settings and, well, I opened with the result. Once again, even though the gamma shift was unexpectedly dramatic, it did give me an image that was completely transferrable to the paper. 

So, I think this tells me that I need to start my images in the final color space. But that looks to mean that I have to understand in advance... at the very inception of pulling an image from the FlashCard.... have to understand the paper upon which I shall finally print it.

That cannot be correct. Do you think about that when you capture images? The paper upon which you might finally print the image? 

So, while a lot's getting better, this looks like a project that will fill productive hours yet. But that's what a hobby's about, right? And in this case I'm learning from the books, essays, and videos of world class experts (who apparently also have editors who know all about  communicating. 

BTW--- GEEK STUFF:I handheld my Canon 7D with an EFS 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens cranked all the way out. And the fill lights were table lamps, the primary light was from the TV monitor Katelynn was watching. Which meant cranking the ISO to 16,000. That, of course either cursed the final image, or flattered it through a gentle shower of noise. I grew up with Kodak's Tri-X as the goto film It shot at 300ASA, but everybody cranked it up 4 or 5 stops. Which meant that grain gave images their authenticity. It was a wonderful texture. 

Thinkin' About This Stuff. 1

Okay... There's this thing called "Color Management". And it's all about sliding what you see on the screen into a different-sized envelope.  Only the dimensions of the original are defined in color numbers, and a unique set of metrics Like pushing a hot dog into a cube.

Gamma is a term that defines the dimensions of different spaces. So gamma defines different work spaces like sRGB, or RGB, CMYK, or my favorite RGB (Adobe). There are others. My Canon 7D is set to create RGB images. But net images are usually contained inside of an sRGB box. And each printer/paper combination has its own unique envelope that shapes colors that will be reproduced.

So... Color Management has to do with a series of moves from Camera envelope to monitor envelope to printer/paper envelope. I think of each of those envelopes as gammas. And they just don't overlap. No matter what, it's almost impossible to match a monitor image to final print. 

The cheaper the monitor, the less likely that the process will be predictable. And even with the best monitors, if their screens aren't identically calibrated, both with themselves and standards for other gammas, then what you see you really won't get into a printer and onto its paper.

Three are so many variables here. It's terrifically complex and discouraging if you're printing test prints while changing values of the transmitting gamma. 

Oh... and then there's viewing light. I replaced all of the lights in my studio so that they'd mimic daylight. Tungsten lights darken the dynamic range while shifting the perceived printed image toward red/magenta. I can now hold my print next to my monitor and actually compare the range of colors.  

I'm using the image above as my first level test. The palette is vivid but they fall within a narrow color range. I'm tweaking my computer/monitor combo and working to get the monitor's gamma as close to the Epson P-800/chosen paper gamma. I'm about 90% there.

Candle Lit Craft

I'm printing again. 

For years I owned an HP 1680 printer Until HP disabled the thing. Uh-huh, under the guise of an update they first altered the driver so that it would no longer allow the use of profiles for any papers other than HP's. Then they ceased to produce (or made very scarce) at least one of the inks. Then, as they sold fewer of those inks, they announced that the fall off in demand indicated that the should discontinue all of them. So the 1680 became a very heavy paperweight. I will never buy another HP device. Pity, the 1680 was a terrific 13X17" appliance but it "only" needed three ink cartridges (with two others interchangeable for B&W printing). So it was not only good, it was inexpensive to feed.

That was over two years ago, and since then I've outsourced prints with frustratingly mixed results. 

Fine art photographic printing is high craft. Worse, it's a fragile skill that, like shooting a pistol, demands regular practice to stay fresh. So, irregularly for the past couple of years, I read printer reviews, and saved my money. There are only three companies which make reasonably competitive machines for the prosumer. And since HP is out, that meant Canon and Epson. A reason I'd originally chosen HP was that they built printing nozzles into their ink cartridges. So if one irreparably jammed, the only cost was the ink that remained in that discarded container. 

Canon also builds nozzles into cartridges, Epson OTH feeds ink through a dedicated nozzle in its machine. Should that jam (and there's a lot of history of that happening - it's a common complaint), a big piece of the printer unit needs to be professionally replaced. Big Expense!

But Epson is the printer with the longest experience with pigment-based inks. Over the years I've asked artists whose prints I'd admired about pigment versus dye-abased ink. They convinced me that my own work could be considerably more subtle if I shifted to pigments. Side by side comparisons of my own prints done in dye (on my original HP) compared to pigment (done by friends), convinced me that I could see their extended gamut.

And yet, these printers took nourishment from 8, 10, 12 and more cartridges of ink - an expensive proposition. Moreover, the seductive song of prints larger than 13X19" also nuzzled my imagination. And then out came Epson's SureColor P800! 

This thing could produce 17X22" prints - or much longer with an inexpensive paper-roll accessory. It's mouth was wide enough to accept thick media and even non paper-materials through various openings. And, reviewers predicted that with its newer machines, that Epson has largely overcome the clogged nozzle problem assuming that the machine produced at least one print a week and, of course, used only Epson Ultra Chrome HD pigments - in its 8 cartridges. 

Moreover, one of those cartridges was an alternative hue that the machine would substitute for another cartridge when I printed B&W. That eliminated the necessity of manually replacing a cartridge and loss of ink as the machine went through a complete cleaning procedure*. 

Last Black Friday, Adorama in New York offered the P800 at a discount price AND offered TWO mail-in rebates. Making it not only the lowest price I've seen on the P800, but since I can also get a tax deduction on the machine (I am a magazine editor and we use many of my prints both in the pubs and  we print out POS copy for posters and POS cards) all of that combined to make my trigger finger twitch and BANG! The heavy new black device arrived in early December. 

BUT... I told you that printing is a fragile craft. It'd been years since I'd done any. Moreover this machine's very sophistication would magnify any of my faults. 

Soo.... Look, in spite of my prints going toward my day-job, much of my interest in things photographic is also fueled by an excitement over  process. I'll bet that I've spent thousands of hours studying posted images, watching how-to videos, and reading books on everything from art criticism through color theory, lighting, and craft. 

So before firing up the P800 I took the last seven or so weeks to read and study fine art photographic printing. I also bit-the-bullet and subscribed to the Adobe Creative Cloud, which added to the learning curve since I was jumping from Photoshop 4! Without  LightRoom!! Heck, I can do what I imagine right now in PS4 along with the took-kit of filters I've accumulated. And Adobe Bridge has been a perfectly competent device for storing and filing my images. 

However, the books made it clear that the print engines built into PS-CC and LightRoom CC are powerfully more complex than PS4's. So I've gone through a library of study.

Here's where I've come so far... 

1.     √ Epson: The SureColor P800 Series Manual

2.     √ Lisa Snyder: The Challenge of WYSIWYG Printing, PhotoShop Magazine: January 2016, P. 54

3.     √ Rob Shepard:  New Epson Complete Guide to Digital Printing revised & updated 2011: Pixiq

4.     √ Martin Evening: Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers 2016, Focal Press  pp. 671-694.

5.     √ Scott Kelby: The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC Book for Digital Photographers, New Riders

6.     √ Jeff Schewe:  The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom & Photoshop for Printing

7.     √ Uwe Steinmuller: Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Ink-Jet Printers

9.     √ Scott Kelby: 2015 ,  the Adobe Photoshop book for digital photographers, New Riders, Chapter 13 Pp 438-482

Epson, Adorama, and B&H all have a number of YouTube seminars led by impressive printers.  So I hunkered down weeknights and weekends (and two snow days) working toward my first P800 prints. Last week I made one. Onto Epson Premium 4X6" Glossy photo paper. It was murky, muddy, and didn't come close to my monitors' images. So... I calibrated all of my 5 monitors with a newly purchased DataColor Spyder5. 

Trying again, the color gamut was much wider, but the printed images were still considerably darker than the monitor images. Which brought me back to the books with special attention to color gamuts. AHAH! The images began to sparkle, and I moved up to 8X10" Epson Ultra Premium Glossy photo paper. Which is where I am now. In a few minutes I'm going to take that image atop this post (which I photographed at Christmas, but processed last  night**), to see if I can replicate in print the subtlety of its RGB color range. Then... 

Well, I purchased a sample pack of Epson's legendary Signature Worthy Archival Ink Jet Paper. It's worthwhile to goto www.epson.com and look at the videos they've posted on a number of these surfaces/weights/media papers, each featuring a different fine art photographer's work and thoughts on their favorite paper. 

How will this work out? Hmmmm... I'll letcha' know. K?
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*Note, there is still a partial cleaning routine that the P800 does, which is an encouragement to segment printing so that first  all color work THEN all monotone printing is done separately to economize on ink. 

** That image up there was grabbed, hand-held at 300mm, with my Canon 7D with fill-light from a Christmas tree  across the room, with the main light flickering from a candle near to the girl's face.