I could also colorize them, too!Originally Posted by Drew Wiley
I could also colorize them, too!
Here's what I do.
That file is straight out of the camera (D7000), converted from a RAW file in LR5.0.
If I stretch out the histogram a little bit I can get a little more punch out of the blacks like this.
Clearly the look and feel of the image is entirely subjective and up to you, but I have found that scanning pt/pd prints, or any alt processes (save wet-plate Ambrotypes), leave me wanting something 'more'.
Good luck!
Last edited by Kimberly Anderson; 13-Aug-2013 at 14:19. Reason: I added more cool stuff.
I've used an Eversmart Pro flatbed, and have had excellent results (you can never get the real 'feel'.. but it gets me close...)
Oil painters and sculptors show their work online all the time. There may be some frustration that you can perfectly capture something 3-D in 2-D, but I don't think they lose too much sleep over it. Ultimately you have to trust viewers to know there are differences between physical objects and screen images.
And while I've seen many photographs that were better in real life than on screen (and a few that were worse), I've rarely seen a great photograph that couldn't be appreciated on screen. Forget great—I've rarely seen an interesting photograph that wasn't interesting on screen. Maybe somewhere there's an image who's importance is so precarious it can only be transmited via the surface texture of the paper. I sure haven't seen it.
The clincher for me was my habitual disappointment with Rembrandt paintings in books. No matter how they polarize and light them, they never have magic. The web
only drags things down a few hundred notches more. You interact with the nominal subject - that's all. Seeing his self-portrait in person was a revelation. The impasto, the shimmering gold buttons, which only look yellow in reproduction - gives one the correct impression of his genius as a painter. Thank goodness the web
didn't exist back then, or all the usual wise ass web surfers would just go around saying how easy it all is to mimic. In photography, quality printmaking separates the men from the boys.
I don't think they'd even know that Rembrandt existed. (or if they did. would eve care who he was...If the requirement was that you only see it in person to 'know' it, then we're talking an incredibly small percentage of people who would have experienced this throughout history. As it is, the vast majority of people have been able to appreciate that Rembrandt was a master, only by seeing the work in books
Without the internet.. would more than a hundred people would ever have seen your work? (most being friends and family). I'd say it's pretty important to figure out a way to get a sense of what your work is out there electronically, if you're interested in more than that many people seeing it. If the work on the net doesn't convey some of the magic of one's work, or worse.. is a bad representation of one's work.... then the general opinion of the world is going to be that the work sucks.
Not a requirement though.... many are quite happy to have their work known to only a few.
Seeing a web image is NOT seeing my work by a long long long shot! It's just hypothetically at best a catalog impression for picking subject matter once someone has already gained familiarity with the actual quality of my work, which can only be obtained by direct viewing (if I even bothered updating the thing, or added the other 98% of my specific prints to it). Image by itself means nothing - one can simply scan an original transparency to simulate that. A well tuned print is something else entirely. If it wasn't for distinct IRS business recommendations (just like a letterhead and business card in old days), I wouldn't even bother with a website. 100% of my print sales have come from people seeing the print live anyway. Web surfers have sent compliments from almost every country of the world, presumably because some of them are intelligent enough to understand a web image is only a vague fascimile, and something more serious exists in the real print form which these deliberately crude copies were made. ... just like we all understand that an halftone reproduction of a Rembrandt painting isn't the real deal either. It all obviously gets a little more complicated when encountering a younger generation which only understands electronic images. ... I remember when the
Westons had about the ugliest website I've ever seen, next to Kodak's. The idea back then was to be widely accessible, since lots of things ran slow. Now these have been cleaned up quite a bit, and high speed connections are routine. Frankly, it all an extremely low priority to me. I'm not in a technology horse race with
Industrial Light and Magic. I'm not selling web skills or services, and the dude who handles my site is extremely skilled and successful (he hosts quite a few Silicon
Valley clients), so can easily modernize things anytime I choose. But what's the point. I'm not trying to impress geeks. If one happens to be in the business of
selling electronic stocks images, or regards the web as their primary mode of visual communication, that's a whole different story. But do it to well and they'll just
pirate your image anyway, for some stupid screensaver or something. So yeah, for me personally... I much rather have a small dedicated audience of the real deal
than a large crowd who only get a crude approximation. But don't worry about Rembrandt ... he was famous long before either the web or color offset printing.
Back then real people took real time to look at real things if they had the opportunity. I traveled all the way to DC to look at real Rembrandt's in the Natl Gallery,
and it was worth more to me than owning all the published Rembrandt books in existence (not that he's my favorite painter by any means - I actually went there
to view Vermeer).
Pete,
The way I scan images (silver) that are not glossy is to make two scans, one rotated 180º, and combine the scans in Photoshop. This gets rid of most if not all of the reflections off of the surface depending on the paper. If you really want to go nuts you could combine four scans, each one 90º to the last, if your scanner is big enough. I also include a Gretag target too when I scan to make sure the colors come out right. I am obviously leaving out details, but you can contact me if you want.
There is the solution to your problem based on what you have available to you right now.
That work must really be special.
I was predictably dismissive of the web at first. But it became clear that good web images get across most of what's important about an image. I spent decades as fine print junkie, and was lucky enough to live with easy access to the greatest hits of printmakers whose craft I admired—this wasn't about lack of exposure to the real deal.
On the web we don't get to admire certain tactile qualities, but realistically, display under glass often demolishes those as well. As does the dim light used for museum display of fugitive Victorian processes.
The are only few cases where I find web images can't substantially stand in for a prints. Those usually involve daguerrotypes or images (or installations) that depend on huge scale.
But ordinary silver or platinum prints? Please. If the web can't communicate what's important about the image, maybe it's because there isn't anything.
If a seventh grade marching school band tuba player can't do Bach, Bach must not have had anything to offer to begin with. If you can't correctly fit a kitchen cabinet with a chainsaw, it doesn't deserve to be installed to begin with. I don't get the logic.
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