• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / The Last Word / PhotoLucida 2009: printing the glossies

PhotoLucida 2009: printing the glossies

April 14, 2009 JimK Leave a Comment

While I was printing the matte pictures, I edited the glossy versions. It didn’t take much. Mostly I added a little contrast-enhancing S-curve that strengthened the midtone separation at the expense of the shadows and the highlights. When printed on the higher-Dmax glossy paper, the midtones looked a little dark, so, if the highlights would handle it, I increased the setting of the exposure control. If important highlights were already near paper white, I added some midtone gain with a curve instead of messing with exposure. I used a little soft light to pull up any shadows that suffered from the S-curve.

All the while, I was worried that I was making the work too garish. I increased contrast slowly, mindful of that old bit of darkroom psychology that one look at a too-contrasty print can poison your mind and make the right contrast look flat. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried; the test prints looked great. To look their best, they needed more light than the matte prints. Because of the higher Dmax, the glossy prints don’t tolerate low light levels as well as the matte ones. I don’t see anything I can do about it; I guess that’s just the nature of the beast.

It was time to change the ink on the 9800. I found the empty CMY cartridges that came with the printer. I pulled up the instructions. Actually, I didn’t need them, because when you initiate the ink-changing sequence, the printer tells you what to do every step of the way. It went fine until the printer said to install the CMYK cartridges. In a moment of brain fade, I put the Matte Black cartridge back in the printer. It didn’t take me long to realize my mistake, but I couldn’t figure out how to stop the recharging process. So I just stood there fuming for fifteen minutes while I flipped the ink levers up and down as the printer told me to. Then I did it all over again, this time managing to install the Photo Black cartridge.

Then I had to decide on what size to print. I went with the full paper size, 17×25. That size fits the aspect ratio of most of the images better than 17×22, and I can get bigger images, even after I increase the right and left margins from 1.5 to 2 inches to give the image a little more room to breathe. The problem is carrying the prints. 17×22 portfolio boxes are easy to find; I haven’t been able to track down a single one in 17×25. I decided to use the box the paper came in, even though the PhotoLucida people caution on their web site that that looks amateurish. I will be slipping the portfolio cases into a black nylon bag for transport, so I will be spared the shame of walking the streets of Portland with a Harman box under my arm.

As an aside, I should mention that I never considered seriously the idea of matting the prints. The process adds so much weight and size that it’s just not worth it. I’d have to print the images a whole lot smaller to make the mats manageable and I’d much rather have good-sized images than have the added polish of matting. I did make a concession to the fact that I’m showing the work unmatted: I added an extra half inch of margin at the bottom. Normally I center the work to make it easier on the person doing the matting, but these prints are only for the review, and will never be matted, so I figured that I’d make the images look their best when viewed directly on the paper.

With the right ink in the 9800, I started to print. It took longer than for the matte pictures, partly because I had other things to do that dragged me away from the printer, partly because the images were somewhat bigger, and partly because I selected the highest resolution setting, which is not available with matte papers.

The Last Word

← PhotoLucida 2009: printing the matte images PhotoLucida 2009: glossy or matte? →

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.