Recommended Endpoints | Photoshop Training with Dan Margulis

A photographer on another list asked about recommended end point settings for images to be sure highlight and shadow detail were properly maintained. Since very often I do not know the conditions my images are to be printed under I wondered what the folks on this list would recommend.

Also I am wondering if there is any prevailing thought on whether it's better to have true whites and blacks in the image while keeping the important detail in a certain range, or is it better to set the final values so that no tones exceed certain limits. (In other words which way is easier for printers to deal with?)

Thanks!

Dennis Dunbar

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I usually scan high bit and a tad flat (8/10 values of true flat histogram) so I can have headroom for both ends. Then once converted into my Working Space (that conversion alone can alter the tone scale so having some headroom here is important), I use the Levels Option/Alt trick to adjust a bit closer while still keeping some headroom (a few values) since the conversion to an output space can once again adjust these points closer to blocking up detail I might want. At this point I can go down to 8 bit color if I want to (and with Photoshop CS, it's so easy to stay in high bit and end up with HUGE file once I have a few layers).

I try and set the clipping in levels using the trick above to see where an individual color channel might go to zero or 255. One channel clipping isn1t a problem but all three could be. Keep in mind that any kind of sharpening can take those delicate highlight values over the edge. So I'll do capture sharpening (to over come softness in scan or digital capture) before doing the levels clipping trick first. Output sharpening can again move values over the top so I do that after conversion to the output space while I still have the headroom to keep from clipping what I might not want to lose.

I'm not saying that clipping is bad as long as you are happy with whatever detail that gets lost is unimportant to you. A specular highlight might need to be 255/255/255 so the image doesn't appear muddy (same with blacks. Like making a good conventional print in the darkroom, we usually want a good paper white somewhere and the blackest black the paper can accept). Image content really plays a role here as does the person who is making the decision what they want the final image to appear like on print.

I think this is totally image (and user) dependant. There might be very good reason why you'd not care at all about subtle shadow detail if the image called for a very contrasty appearance. Some really well know B&W photographers could care less about the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) detail in shadows and would prefer to have a very strong black tonality within the image (look at Greg Gorman's work). This is why the guy MAKING the image really is the best person to make such decision. This is also why automating this kind of stuff can be dangerous.

Andrew Rodney

http://www.imagingrevue.com/

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Dennis Dunbar wrote:

When working in RGB/LAB, as dark as possible or appropriate to the image content without plugging transitional tones and shadow tones.

When in CMYK, often the same goals as in RGB and working to the ink limit often manually performing UCR in the shadows to get more black and less CMY. Shadow tones take care of themselves from RGB to CMYK, with perceptual or with RelCol using BPC on in most cases shadow tones are mapped correctly. It is often the lightest printing dots that need more attention to detail, as the profile will simply reproduce the original tonal values where possible, it can take some judgement on what the smallest printable dot should be.

I personally care less about the extreme tonal values (histogram based moves), and more about the image content, so rather than setting range on the darkest/lightest areas I try to shoot for the areas of interest in an image (if possible), so that more of the image range is hit with a steeper curve than would be applied if simply setting global range based on histogram readings. This may often lead to a processed image having pure white and pure black if making histogram evaluations, as the less critical areas have been maximized and thus the darker/lighter tones which I do not care about have been blown out/filled in (this relates to the second question below) so that the interest areas have the full range of tones without maxing out.

Fixed colour samplers and info palette readings are a must.

If handing off final, processed images which do not need edits and only need conversion to output space, or are supplied in output space I would go with the first option so that you can decide on the contrast etc. Obviously supply of a 'flat' image which does not occupy the full tonal range gives the end user room to move but do you want them to make these subjective moves or will they simply output the file flat without expanding range?

It would depend on many variables, as with many of these 'hypothetica, unknown' situations, any two parties who exchange work may have different expectations and standards. Communication is always best.

Stephen Marsh.

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Dennis,

When you say printer do you mean device like an Epson or a service provider?

Target values are good guidelines for white and black points based on the process you are targeting. Target values also vary based each images content.

So to get the optimal result you need to know where the image is going to target the wp and bp.

If you know you will be repurposing an image, then conventional wisdom suggests to create a master with enough detail in the highlight and shadow, so if you know the image is headed for different types of output you will have enough information to represent the image when it is played out. If you don1t and you either pinch the highlights to 255 or make the shadows 0 you are potentially going to ruin the image file the next time you want to output it to another process that requires more highlight and shadow values.

Jim Rich

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Dennis,

This is question I get a lot in my consulting practice. My answer may not be consistant with the "correct" method of using the numbers, but it satisfies my clients' expectations for what a photograph should look like. It's a long answer, and if you want the Photoshop trick, skip to the bottom.

First, it requires understanding that taking a reading off of a reflected white target to assign values which equal balanced white (such as ~253R,253G,253B) is not an accurate representation of reality. Very rarely when we see white is it chromatically pure white as the recipe stated above. As I type this, I am looking out at a lovely sunny noon day in northern Vermont. Plenty of white reference here(three feet of snow).

Chromatic adaptation is a function of how we see. What it means is that the brightest light source we see, we interpret as "white". So, when I look out at the snow, since it is so bright out, it looks "white" to me(Of course we know snow is white). Except for this tricky bit of foolery going on in my head. If I really look at the snow as critically as I would a photographic print, I can see that the appearence of the snow is kind of bluish.

Now, the brighter bulbs out there know that this is because the color temperature of our noon day sun in northern Vermont is about 9900K(I actually just measured it with my Minolta color meter). This will make the snow look bluish. In otherwords, not chromatically pure "white" like our 253,253,253 reading. Inside, in my 3800K office, a sheet of white paper looks kind of reddish, but since it is the brightest source of reflected light in my line of vision, I know that piece of paper is white. So which white is white? The bluish snow or the reddish paper. They both are thanks to chromatic adaptation, depending on which dominates my line of vision.

Taking a reflected reading off of either will produce an acceptable photograph, but not a real representation of what I see. In fact, if I balance off of either, I will actually be altering the quality of the light used to illuminate the subject, which can negatively effect every thing else in the shot.

The analogy of using film is a good one, here. Film is rated at a certain color temperature. If I shoot indoor film outdoors, the picture is gonna look bluer overall(sometimes I get this backwords). You are not taking reflected reading with film, you are recording a scene iluminated by a certain color temperature light and the appearrance of the image is relative to the color temperature of the film.

To get a balanced picture with film, you shoot film rated the same as the color temperature as your lighting. I used to shoot Fuji RTP, tungsten, because I used to light with Arri 1000 lights, and the color temp of the film was the same as my lights, and you know what, the film was balanced.

So, what are the "numbers" for digital? Well, the exposure range of a digital image(assuming 8bit color) is 0 black to 255 white. Anything in between is a recorded value. Now, just like film, the exposure may not be the appearance you want from the final image. Think about shooting negative film and making a print. My photography professor in college used to emphasize shooting to the strengths of the medium. Record everything you want as far as detail, and then "purpose" the image to the strength of the means of reproduction. His name is Danny Gutherie, and I think he now teaches at Michigan State.

A "correct" exposure for digital is to have all the detail between 0 and 255. White can be any value you want it to be. The brightest value in the image will be closest to what we see as "white" thanks to chromatic adaptation. The problem is that this recipe often does not produce a pretty picture.

I like to get the most information in my exposure... the densest possible recording. To adjust for white, I don't re-balance my image "by the numbers". I am assuming that you are balancing your image capture. Very few of us shoot without color balancing the capture. Why would you need to re-balance? You shouldn't. But you want a nice white and you don't have one now.

What I teach in Photoshop is to make a duplicate layer, and to set the blending mode of the top layer to "Screen". (If you want to know what this function does to the values, refer to the Photoshop help and search "screen") Then, by adjusting the opacity of the Screen layer, I can adjust the overall exposure... the appearance of white. To keep your blacks from getting washed out, go ahead and use curves on the either layer to bring in your black point.

This will give you the photographic look of altering the exposure of the print without changing the color balance or exposure of the recording. Profiling experts sometimes take umberage at this method, particularly those who do everything "by the numbers" but my practical experience and several satisfied customers agree that this makes good pictures.

Jorge Paraa on the APAdigital list has often spoken of the virtues of "ExpoDisc" for white balancing a recording. I have never used it, but he has always given good advice. It also stands to reason. The ExpoDisc is a white lens cover that helps you record and balance the ambient lighting condition rather than a reflected reading.

Since digital cameras use CCDs or CMOS chips, the same as in digital video cameras, there is great precedent for this method. Professional video cameras typically black balance of a recording with the lens iris completely closed, and then take a white balance through a translucent white lens hood. Same principle works for digital photography.

The "screen" method has always worked for me. I am sure, just like everything in Photoshop, there are a million methods for producing an acceptable result.

Happy new year,

Mike Bevans

www.tribecalabs.com

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Thanks Mike:

...for a marvellous piece of work about the fundamentals of what white can mean.

I might add that if it looks good in the final product your process has worked.

The following little bit is clearly way off topic, but it resonates the same within me in regards to this thread: I remember I once asked my lawyer about proper use of points, and semi-colons and colons and what he said was: "Just make sure it looks good." For $200 an hour that was my lesson that day!

In short, what it all boils down to is whether in print, on computer screen, on slides, or whatever medium, if the thing looks good to most or even some within the intended audience, it's "good". No matter what the measuring device(s), or the mathematics you might have used to get to the end, if the final product passes muster with some or even most humans, then pat yourself on the back...

All of the functions and tools that have been developed to reach this point via hardware and software are designed to help and control exactly the same end point. If you find a solution, you've done it...

Best to all,

Ray

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Ray

Methinks you need to change your lawyer or invest in Fowler's "Modern English Usage." It's hell of a lot cheaper than a lawyer and contains more apt advice! :-))

The point about the proper use of points, colons and semi-colons is not that they look good in print but, rather, they try to prevent your writing from being misconstrued. Sounds like your lawyer is a failed English major as well as a failed imagist.

The point about endpoints in images is not necessarily that there is a white and/or a black point in your image but, rather, that your image is not misconstrued by the output device or, at least, as little as possible.

In Photoshop, you can set the highlight and shadow Eyedroppers so that, when used, they do not produce pure white or pure black but still map the end points of your image to the end points of your output device.

Mike Bevans said some interesting things in his post. However, as someone who shot broadcast video professionally for some 10-12 years, I can categorically say it's not the norm to white balance cameras by using a translucent white lens hood. I have heard of the ExpoDisc and it sounds like a good investment, especially if you shoot in JPEG mode. I tend to favour RAW mode and do the color balance in Camera Raw.

--/ Shangara Singh.

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Shangara,

It has been over ten years since I shot any broadcast video. I used to use a Sony 3-chip 3/4" tape camera(at least if my memory serves me) and it came with two lens covers. A black one to cover the lens, and a transluscent white one for white balancing. I have seen similar lens covers for Beta-cams and for SVHS cameras; however (and please note my correct usage of semi-colon, and liberal application of parantheses), I defer to the pros.

Happy new year,

Mike Bevans

www.tribecalabs.com

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--- Shangara Singh wrote:

I had to see if I was crazy. Fortunately, although it may not be the "norm" ambient white balance through a translucent white peice of plastic (milky white plexi works well) is indeed a standard method.

I actually was reminded of this trick by a former Leaf salesman. Leaf cameras actually come with, or came with, just such a white lens covering. It was at that point that I recalled my own video experience, and remembered that this method works really well.

I also found a reference at www.videouniversity.com in which Hugh states, "I use a white plastic lens cover for my Nav 900. Great for white balance. I've seen various people of the years with white fins, they faded pretty quickly and had big gouges/scratches out of them." He goes on to caution that when shooting in the ocean, the white "fin" attracts sharks, so please be careful when using this method in the ocean.

I am not trying to defend my position. As I stated, there are many methods for producing an acceptable image. I just had to double check that I was not passing along false information. As with any information you get on this or any other list, take it with a grain of salt. Try it out. If it works,great. If not, please remember we are all learning together.

The original question was less about white balancing, and more about "endpoints".

On this, I have one other observation. I am used to shooting with an eyelike MF back. These have an excellent range of up to 14 stops! This is a big difference between professional backs and Pro-sumer SLRs. SLRs tend to be much more contrasty, and do not hold as much detail in the shadows as the pro-backs. I have had it expained to me by German engineers that this is due to the "full well" capacity of the pixel, which if I am not mistaken, is how many electrons a pixel can hold.

I only mention this because, I tend to shoot to preserve detail in the highlights, like shooting slide film. I light to preserve detail in the shadows. Of course, I have this luxury working in a studio. I would welcome people relating their experience with SLRs. For example, do you expose to maintain shadow detail, like shooting negatives, or do you shoot to preserve highlight detail?

Currently I shoot with a point and shoot Canon Elph. I send my pictures, sRGB, to www.adoramacamera.com for prints on Kodak gold paper (Adorama prints with a Noritsu). What is nice about this is that the pictures look great. I know of some photographers in New York who use Adorama's service as "proofs" because the sRGB prints are great indicators of what a final CMYK print is capable of producing.

Best for the new year,

Mike Bevans

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From: Mike Bevans

For D-SLRs, both approaches can work, mostly depending on your control of the lighting. For scenes with tightly controlled lighting, such as studios, shooting for the shadows is prefered by many, since the shadows are so tricky to restore later (very few sensor levels per stop in the shadows compared to the highlights).

In contrast (if you'll pardon the pun) shooting in the field is closest to exposing for chromes. Since sensors are linear and very unforgiving (once you get to your maximum reading there is no toe or shoulder or anything--all detail is gone) keeping the highlights is crucial.

This is one of the big sources of (amusing?) flamewars on digital lists. Manufacturers of D-SLRs can either choose an "accurate" exposure for their auto-metering that easily blows out highlights (because there is so little "headroom"), or they can program their meters to preserve highlights and get flamed for having "inaccurate" meters because the subject winds up under-exposed. Currently they've mostly opted for the later. The solution is of course to capture images where all the detail you need fits within the dynamic range of the camera, but not everyone can or does do that.

--David Cardinal

Pro Shooters LLC

http://www.proshooters.com

http://www.nikondigital.org

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Fortunately, any DSLR will give you immediate feedback after shooing in the form of a histogram. (Digicams with electronic viewfinders will give you a live histogram, which is about the only thing "better" about them.)

For my shooting style, which is to shoot quickly without being too careful about exposure, I find it safest to set the exposure bias at -1, and resurrect shadow detail later during raw conversion. The Canon 10D at ISO 100 has enough dynamic range that I can get away with doing that. Some people wouldn't tolerate the added noise hit, but it's all dependent upon your style.

Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco

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on 12/28/03 3:14 PM, Paul D. DeRocco wrote:

Unfortunately it1s kind of useless for anyone shooting a RAW file (which is the best way to get the data). The Histogram in this case is based on the matrix set for either sRGB or Adobe RGB and has no basis on the actual RAW data (how can it? The RAW file is Grayscale and yet to be a true RGB file).

Shoot RAW and you'll get an extra stop of range over shooting into one of the preset matrix (and again, the Histogram is basically science fiction in such a case, only showing you the JPEG based on a RAW plus JPEG setting).

Andrew Rodney

http://www.imagingrevue.com/

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From: "Mike Bevans"

Mike, that was an excellent discussion. You covered quite a lot of territory in only a few paragraphs, most of which have been deleted for brevity.

A question arises that may also be an answer of a sort to your question. In using a SLR it is a simple matter to use a combination of a modified channel copy and a layer mask to combine the best features of properly exposed shadows with the best features of a shorter exposure that has more midtone and highlight detail. Of course a tripod and a cable release are a necessity since the two shots must be essentially identical except for exposure time or f-stop setting. Wouldn't this work as well with digital exposures? It probably takes less time than figuring proper exposures with a good meter, and it gives you far more versatility.

Howard Smith

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Howard--That is a fairly popular approach, particularly in the studio or with landscapes. As you mention, it is pretty easy to combine the two (or more) exposures in Photoshop. Aside from the added hassle, it doesn't seem to have any real technical drawbacks--in particular if you use 2 raw images so they are both nice, linear recordings of the scene.

Personally, I'm hoping someone uses something like Pixim's DPS in a D-SLR eventually. With that technology each pixel can have its own exposure, so that they can in effect combine multiple different exposures in the camera with one shutter press. That gives them very high dynamic range. For now the technology is only in lower resolution high frame rate video cameras.

--David Cardinal

Pro Shooters LLC

http://www.proshooters.com

http://www.nikondigital.org

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FWIW - A recent 'how-to' article in Popular Photography showed the construction and use of a white / gray (18%) / black reference target which would be included in a reference photo under your given lighting conditions. The colors were painted on solid hardwood balls attached to a base with flexible wire to allow for easy positioning in the scene. The curved face of the balls makes it easy to measure a reference in the approximate range of each color that you want to set. The author details setting the appropriate W/G/B eyedroppers using either curves or levels, then saving that information for application to all other photos from that session which used the same lighting. I haven't tried it to this point, but it sounds good in theory - thoughts?

Steve

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From: Steve Wilson

Probably works fine. My observation is that, unless you're trying to document the precise color of something, you can often make a photo look better than reality. Just play with the knobs until you like the way it looks. The last part, about using the same setting for all shots, is probably wise, at least as a starting point, to avoid creating images that look like they don't belong together.

Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco

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Folks,

I would like to request an end to the "endpoints" thread for the same reason that I asked for a close to the "digicam--good enough" thread last week.

To reiterate: this group studies how to get the best results from *existing* photographs. We would like those existing photographs to be as good as possible, yes, and to that extent there is some overlap, but this is not a list about photographic techniques or photographic equipment. Our mission begins after the photograph is taken.

Since it is a related discipline, there is certainly room for *brief* Q&A, particularly if some of the list members who aren't photographers themselves are asking why photographers do certain things they way they do. However, lengthy threads that are essentially of interest to photographers only belong elsewhere.

The question of what happens to a photograph once it is taken is obviously of considerable concern to professional photographers, as well as printers, retouchers, and even color management consultants. So, photographers are very welcome here and in fact comprise some of the most valuable members of the list. But, we don't want it to become photographer-only.

Therefore, for those interested in making final contributions to this thread, we will leave it upon until midnight tomorrow (Tuesday), after which it will close.

My comment is that the issue is very similar to the question of how to scan an image if you don't know what's going to happen to it. Either way, the answers seem to me to be the same.

*You have to be careful not to blow critical highlights out or plug critical shadows. This typically means being slightly conservative because it's easy to expand range slightly in Photoshop but it's a PITA to have to reshoot or rescan something because the detail isn't there.

*If there's some eccentric condition, such as weird lighting at the time the image is exposed or a cast in the film that's being scanned, you make modest moves in the right direction, and are conservative in doing so, for the same reason as above: simple casts are easy to fix in Photoshop; overly compensated images are not.

*If, in addition to not knowing where the image is going, you don't know who's going to work on it, OR if quality is not the first consideration, OR if you don't have a lot of confidence in your own Photoshop ability, then you have to be considerably MORE conservative, for fear that somebody will hose the shadows when they take it to some cheapo desktop printer or print it in a newspaper.

*If you don't know where it's going, but you do know that you're going to be the person taking it there, and you're good at color correction, full range is the way to go. It leaves the most options.

Dan Margulis

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I've been using "tone balls" for years and they are great. I think I purchased them and extra paint from Megavision about six years ago. The curved surface does allows you to get a much better reading on things than a flat card, but the problem I have is that they are BALLS and somehow they always end up bouncing off the set and across the floor. If you do intend to use tone balls, make several sets and keep plenty of paint on hand!

David

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PS CS now includes Photomerge, which automatically finds the overlap between images (perhaps with a little manual help) and lines them up. It has an option which tells it not to flatten the image at the end, but leave it in layers. It may be possible to use this feature to line up two essentially identical images, which would eliminate the need for the tripod. Just a wild thought.

Ciao, Paul D. DeRocco

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From: Steve Wilson

These balls are called Tone Balls and were invented by the folks at MegaVision to cure a problem where three different shooters got three different color balances on the same set (camera/strobes/computer). It turns out that the three guys on day, swing and graveyard shift used a flat neutral reference target for specifying graybalance. It turned out that they didn't place the Colorchecker in the same fashion. Choosing a balance point on the balls, where the lights overlap their coverage, resulted in consistent color for all shooters. Had the lighting been color corrected this may not have been necessary but, the balls are fine for providing a neutral on set. Tone Balls mimic the Macbeth Colorchecker for highlight, midtone, and shadow (1.5D).

Tone Balls are quite good for providing neutral balance. The standard balls are about 1.5 inches in diameter. Large balls can be made for furniture sets and very small ones can be made for jewelry sets. If you make your own, take a Colorchecker to the store and have some paint mixed

up by sampling the appropriate patches with a colorimeter.

Using the balls (or any target reference) for setting highlight and shadow is a mistake if your project's subject reflectances differ from the target reflectance's highlight and shadow.

Richard Chang

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Forgive me if this issue seems trivial, but it is always tripping me up.

Just like the word "resolution" the word "printer" is too all-encompassing. There's too many things you could mean by that term.

Such as:

-a commercial printing company;

-a local printing device on the network;

-the person who is doing the printing;

and probably a few more.

How many times have you found yourself explaining what you mean when you say, "send it to the printer"?

Cheers,

Ron Kelly

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There was an early FedEx commercial where something arrives late,

and the guy's boss says "What do you think *send* means, anyway?"

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With respect to some comments from Dan about ending the Endpoints thread:

I am interested in this thread because it typifies something that I am extremely interested in, which is, providing considered transition of tone, starting with the capture. Considered transition of tone is more than setting endpoints, it also involves setting the range of the capture. It involves an understanding of the specifics of press gain between highlight and shadow for each paper stock we commonly print on. It involves a custom "digital emulsion" for each paper rendering we undertake. It involves taking responsibility for the work you craft. It's the difference between taking a picture and fixing it, and making a picture.

In the new digital capture methodology the mission after the capture can be a miserable one or it can be an efficient, value added proposition. The overlap is of considerable value to everyone because it dictates the number of tones available to work with and it dictates the tonal progressions available in the file; it dictates the success or compromise of all that can be done, should the digital capture be the start of the picture rendering process.

It shouldn't be a photographer only discussion. There ought to be some commentary from printers, retouchers and color consultants. Comments about what they get that's good, what's bad, and what simply won't work. Some images are easy to prep, some are difficult, and some are impossible. As long as an increasing percentage of the images our society renders, starts with digital capture, this thread will continue to be more, rather than less, important.

I'd like to suggest to the shooters on the list, that they find out what's going to happen to the image. I've heard the "I don't know and the customer doesn't know..." excuse so often it makes me sick. No one is going to tell you where it's going to go if you can't take advantage of the information. Perhaps this is something akin to casting pearls to swine. Maybe you don't deserve the information. If you can make a definite improvement in the final product because you know where it's going and can shoot accurate highlight and shadow dot percentages to make the best possible rendering, people will more likely share relevant information with you. They share it with the separator. If you're a shooter and want to be privy to the info the separator gets, you'll have to earn the respect necessary to get the info. That's why this thread is relevant. Professional photography isn't in the best shape these days and I think it's partly because we have a long way to go.

Critical highlights or plugged shadows for which target? Make them right for sheet fed and you're hosed for newsprint targets. Make them correct for the newprint and you've got a big compromise trying to make the file go to a sheefed press. You cannot make a great rendering on all targets with a single set of endpoints. Not only do different targets have different endpoints, different targets have different numbers of tones they're capable of rendering, between their endpoints. Newsprint is like a black & white grade 5 paper and sheetfed is like a black & white grade 2 paper. Who'd make a grade 2 neg for grade 5 paper? Because no one would, why is it OK for a digital file? It's not OK and we will give our customers a lesser product if we do. Not all rendering projects are wonderful or have adequate budgets but that's no excuse for know knowing how to optimize a capture for a specific printing condition.

Being slightly conservative for what potential targets? Newsprint and sheetfed? How about newsprint and calendared web? Newsprint and world wide web? Critical for each of these pairs of divergent targets means I'd shoot different highlight and shadow for each of these combinations and I'd tell the client the specific compromises they'll suffer for the secondary target, so go ahead and choose the compromise you'll get. Something I'm dissapointed in is having professional photography poorly crafted because we aren't professional enough to know exactly what target the job will render on. If you don't know where the job will render, selecting endpoints out of thin air will often give you a less than optimal rendering when it does go to the unanticipated target. While this does allow you to complain about the paper, the printing, or the pre-press, it demeans the profession of photography. I get this information from my clients because they know that I will use the information to give them a better job. I am curious about how many shooters actually ask customers for paper stock and press specifications. It never hurts to ask. If you asked and you got the information, would you know what to do with the information?

A real pro won't shoot in wierd lighting unless the client wants wierd lighting. Fixing wierd lighting shouldn't be foisted on the color department. Fixing wierd lighting should be managed by the shooter because he has superior tools (lighting) as compared to the color department.

If you don't know who's going work on your shot, what the quality considerations are, and don't have a lot of confidence in you Photoshop ability, I'd recommend you find out where the job is going so that you can shoot more accurately instead of more conservatively. If you continue to screw up because you don't know where the job is going and you don't ask where it's going, you will eventually be replaced by someone who does. Better, faster and cheaper is coming to your town. If you're not perceptably better than the client's wife, they'll choose her because she's cheaper than you.

In a way, I'm beginning to believe that I don't get it. Here's a list where you can ask anything. Why ask what compromise we're willing to accept? Why not ask questions that pro-actively advance our skills? Doesn't this thread mirror the asking of how much less we're willing to provide?

The full range for low density range targets (like newsprint) is a good recipie for compromise and for muddy renderings. I'll take a 1.5 density range capture file with 5% highlight and 85% shadow for newprint over a 3.0 density range with the same highlight and shadow every time. Interestingly, I think this thread is the most relevant we've had for some time because discussing it has the ability to elevate the files we work on, past the point of fixing, up to the level of crafting added value.

In a way, it's too bad this thread didn't ask about typical endpoints for the targets we commonly render to. Or ask about how to craft shadows in a capture for a target with lots of gain in the shadow. Or ask how to shoot to maintain shape in a highlight where you don't have a lot of dots to describe detail. I think these questions would indicate a more valuable thread to the list.

Richard Chang

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on 12/30/03 2:39 PM, Richard Chang wrote:

Yes I agree. Unfortunately the focus of some of the discussions here *seems* to be "how to fix bad images" which while useful is certainly time consuming, expensive and counter productive compared to getting good data to begin with!

The discussions that *seem* to be thought of as "over discussed" (do we have a bandwidth issue?) tend to be those that take the tact of discussing how to get good data in the first place (be it this or discussions of Color Management). I totally believe in the GIGO:Garbage In Garbage Out mantra. But when you've sent years fixing poor images (and teaching how to fix poor image), it's kind of difficult to consider discussing in some length how not to begin with poor images in the first place!

Considering that the role of the scan operator is at best a workflow that will become more and more reduced and replaced by direct digital capture, I can't understand why the discussion of getting good digital capture and handling those files isn't a very important color theory discussion.

Exactly!

Yup. That's not going to change. Way too late to put that toothpaste back into the tube.

You have to remember that for some, the idea of scan once (in this case shoot once) use many is a foreign concept (and it's not going away any more than Color Management and digital capture are going away). Your point is exactly on the mark. How do we insure that the capture is going to be usable for any nature of output device now and in the future (other than "lets scan this every time, to every size to every specific output device" mentality).

Andrew Rodney

http://www.imagingrevue.com/

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on 12/30/03 6:02 PM, Andrew Rodney at andrew@digitaldog.net wrote:

Andrew,

While you say with a bit more clarity this is what (I took) the original

post to be asking, speaking for myself I'm still asking....

Lee

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Thanks for the many suggestions as to how to best set end points for files that are going to press, (yes - as in not an Epson).

What I got is that for the most part the image should be set according to what the creator of the image likes best. It is therefore very important that the artist should know that anything above 5% or below 95% will have a great possibility of getting lost. But there are no hard and fast rules about where to set the end points.

This is as I thought it would be. In the past stock agencies told their photographers to go into levels and pull in the white point to about 5 and the black point to about 245 or so on the 0-255 scale. (I'm working from memory here, the numbers may not be accurate ;-) ) I think then a lot of photographers came to believe there were optimal numbers to shoot for and this is probably what the original question referred to.

Of course if you can get in contact with with printer who will be handling the job you can get the most accurate information. But when you do not know who, or how the image is to be printed it gets a lot more confusing. Providing the client with a good quality proof helps, but there is almost no likelihood that the printer will see the proof.

In these cases what are the recommendations you folks have? (And I'm not asking to start another "to embed or not to embed" debate, just suggestions on making sure highlight and shadow detail stand a good chance of surviving the print run. ;-) )

Thanks!

Dennis Dunbar

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Andrew Rodney writes:

AFAIK that was always the intent, although I'll defer to Dan since it's his list...

Maybe the name of the list is misleading?

...are the ones that rehash the same arguments we've all heard before. Write up a FAQ and point people to it.

(Or start a wiki. If you've never used a wiki, check out:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?NewUserPages

In some ways it works better than a mailing list, because the archives are self-organizing.)

It *is* a very important discussion, for some other list (feel free to start one). We could use a color management list as well.

This is not necessarily a bandwidth issue. Some of us think it's good to have lists with specific topics. I'd rather read several specific lists (or wikis) than one catch-all list.

This particular subject seems to come up any place photographers hang out, so I don't think there's a shortage of places to discuss it.

It's good to get it right the first time, but sometimes it's too late, and you can't send a photographer back in time. This is not going to stop happening just because we have better tools. We can't always tell the customer "sorry, we can't print that job because it's too late to do it right".

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Ron writes, quoting Andrew Rodney,

I am currently editing the most significant threads of 2003 with a view to posting them sometime in the next couple of months. I identified 23 such threads. One of these discusses how to deal with JPEG artifacting. Not a single other one can be described as a how-to-fix-bad-images thread.

The list is supposed to cover the things I teach and write about. My following--those who take my classes, read my writings, hang out on this list--is overwhelmingly composed of serious, high-end photographers, retouchers, and graphic artists who generally *don't* work with bad images but rather are looking to take an already good image and make it excellent.

Don't get me wrong--there are people who take the class and members of this list who *do* have to take real garbage and make beautiful CMYK out of it. But most professional photographers rarely have to start with real garbage.

I definitely think, however, that bad images are a great teaching tool--and that people who don't know how to make bad images a lot better will never be able to get the most out of their good images. The same techniques are in play, just more subtly.

The biggest problems photographers, particularly, have in learning how to create good digital pictures are a) that they haven't had enough experience with bad pictures to realize when their own work has something in common with a bad picture; b) they tend to develop their skills by themselves and can only compare their work against an original, not against what a more skillful person could do with the same image.

That's the reason that professional photographers who take my classes tend to do worse on the first day than people with far less experience who are just following simple rules. Sometimes they try to do very sophisticated and eyepleasing things with the image, but the result winds up not being competitive because they forgot about the basics.

The older I get the more I like the name. Color theory is a great thing to know. The current thread on GCR is an excellent example. If you don't understand the theory of how it works, you cut yourself off from a lot of opportunities.

This list, and my classes, are called APPLIED color theory. There's a difference, because a lot of times ideas seem to work well in theory but the imperfections of the real world get in the way. The GCR thread again serves as an example. The real advantages of GCR, that's color theory. APPLIED color theory combines understanding what these theoretical advantages are with the realities that a) if a job prints too muddy because the black ink was printed absurdly heavily, the printer will tell the client that the photography or the Photoshop file was bad, and b) if a client can't figure out who's to blame, it's a whole lot easier to find a new photographer or Photoshopper than a new printer. A proper understanding of not just the theories but the realities is essential to not having that happen.

If color theory always worked in isolation, without all these inconvenient realities, you wouldn't find so many people hanging out here, and you wouldn't find so many people trying so hard to find out how to make separations and how to sharpen pictures and how to make the best of bad situations when on press.

Dan Margulis