Alt-Process Prints from Digital Negatives or Positives

[sanking]

Attached is a shot of a CMY carbon pigment print. Image size is 7.25 X 10.5", on 12X16" Melinex 339, acrylic sized.

It has taken a lot of fine tuning to get the transfer right, including decreasing soak time and total time of development, and adding some alcohol to the transfer water when mating the second and third image. Even with these changes the magenta and cyan images over the yellow are very delicate, and even 20-30 seconds of over-development, or + 2 or 3 degrees of development water, will result in the very thin layers of those reliefs separating in part from what is below. So I have to be very careful with the development bath, both in terms of exact time and exact temperature.

The image is another wall art/grafitti from Oaxaca, Mexico. Rather macabre, entitled "La vida empieza en donde la vida termina. Dios Nunca Muere." = Reality begins where life ends. God never dies.


Sandy

[bob carnie]

I like your colour work Sandy , hope to see them in person some day

Bob

[sanking]

Thanks Bob,

The work itself is pretty fascinating, but I have mixed feelings about the prints. I am often pleased with the result, but not at all satisfied at this point with consistency in terms of color balance. As you can see, most of the prints I am making are able to live in a fairly wide range of color so everything I am doing at this point is almost in the realm of the one-off and done.

Sandy

I like your colour work Sandy , hope to see them in person some day

Bob

[bob carnie]

Thanks Bob,

The work itself is pretty fascinating, but I have mixed feelings about the prints. I am often pleased with the result, but not at all satisfied at this point with consistency in terms of color balance. As you can see, most of the prints I am making are able to live in a fairly wide range of color so everything I am doing at this point is almost in the realm of the one-off and done.

Sandy

Sandy - One of the reasons I took on colour gum was the fact that the colour was not consistent if being judged by side by side inkjets... This week I am showing 45 prints all from different sources and photographers, who come at photography from unique vantage points. All the prints are either tri toned silver, or duo tone gum and in some cases tri gum.

I expect there will be some with huge lunch bag letdown when they see what I have printed (I did not let the photographers interact with this show on the printing) but what will be funny and I know from last showings of gum prints, people will come in and absolutely love the very same prints. This will confuse the photographer, but I hope it makes them pause and look deeper at the images.

In this show I can say there are two of the very best prints I have made in my career, one coming from a digital capture and the other from film capture.
John Bentley is very concerned about the colour fidelity matching his transparency and I cannot argue with his results , but I must say the chance of allowing the image take on its own unique character with your help is
something very rewarding.
It has been said that John prints rival the very best inkjets in colour fidelity and look, (he strives for this perfection and in most cased gets it )I personally do not want this ever to be said about my work. So I am prepared for the inevitable let down but excited for the absolutely fantastic.

It is so common place these days to make a perfect inkjet or dye coupler print that I think the viewing audience is saturated with quality and when they see one of these non perfect, layered textured prints it takes them aback. Some people are too quick to judge and IMO not the audience I am aiming for. I want people to look at the image and not leave it for a very long time- go to any current contemporary show and you will not find people resting on images as we once did looking at a Salgado enlarger print, or a Sheila Meistner Fresson.

I encourage you not to get caught up in perfection but keep printing the colour and seeing where it takes you . You have such a vibrant archive of images that I for one would love to see one off not perfect colour alongside your perfect carbons we all have seen and love.
The last couple of years have shown me there is no subject matter that will not work, in some cases it takes me about four try's and a lot of paper to figure out how to represent some images.

I have just taken on a show in September of my solarized colour and black and white dresses, and I think I will completely enjoy playing with colour and density and I know for sure they will not be perfect.


Bob

[Len Middleton]

Bob,

Looking forward to seeing the final prints of the dresses. Knowing the dress designer, I think she has a whimsical outlook with some of her designs and will enjoy the use of gum of the dress images.

Keep us posted of when and where they are to be shown so we get a chance to see them.

Best regards,

Len

[bob carnie]

Bob,

Looking forward to seeing the final prints of the dresses. Knowing the dress designer, I think she has a whimsical outlook with some of her designs and will enjoy the use of gum of the dress images.

Keep us posted of when and where they are to be shown so we get a chance to see them.

Best regards,

Len

Thanks Len

I just put the second coat of blue/mag/lampblack mixture on them and am almost finished washing out, I am quite happy with some of them.

[sanking]

.......
John Bentley is very concerned about the colour fidelity matching his transparency and I cannot argue with his results , but I must say the chance of allowing the image take on its own unique character with your help is
something very rewarding.
It has been said that John prints rival the very best inkjets in colour fidelity and look, (he strives for this perfection and in most cased gets it )I personally do not want this ever to be said about my work. So I am prepared for the inevitable let down but excited for the absolutely fantastic....
......
Bob

I don't have any interest in color fidelity that would match a transparency or a specific white balance with a digital image. What I do want, however, is the ability to print very close to the color fidelity I see on the monitor, after I have crafted the tonal values and color balance in accord with my vision of the scene. And, I want to have enough consistency with my process to be able to make another print that comes close to the original in terms of color balance and the disposition of tonal values. And I am getting there with three-color carbon, but slowly.

Attached is a .jpeg of another three-color carbon print I made this past evening. This was the first test print after printing the first color separation set, and is very close to the digital file. Image size of this print is 7.25" X 10.5", transferred to Yupo with the single transfer process, Y>M>C.

Sandy

[bob carnie]

Hi Sandy

So how are you finding the negatives , I feel that I am getting good resolution with inkjet negatives and good colour when pressed to match.. This is not how Todd Gangler and John are making their negatives but relying on stochastic negs.

Also are you printing one layer on top of each other onto Yupo in register, if not when you say single transfer process I am wondering how you are doing this... do you have three separate tissues that are transferred one after the other to combine to make your colour image.?

I am getting really nice registration without aluminum by pre shrinking , better than I imagined and for me this would be great as it saves the aluminum step.

[sanking]

Bob,

I have no problem with inkjet negatives. Inkjet negatives are actually stochastic negatives so they have some of the characteristics of stochastic negatives made with imagesetter machines. But with a lot less hassle. People who began working with one kind of technology often have a lot of trouble adapting to another.

I am printing on the Yupo with single transfer exactly like one would print on polyester for double transfer, except that the reliefs are printed in their final order Y>M>C instead of C>M>Y as would be needed for double transfer where the image would be flipped to a final support paper. I am not using a K as it is not needed for shadow density in color carbon. I am also working with double transfer to paper, though I not shown any of these prints yet. I am including here the text of an article I published in Silverfast some years ago on color carbon where I describe Tod Gangler's method of transferring and developing the colors. John Bentley does the same thing. I am doing pretty much exactly what Tod describes, just in the order Y>M>C for single transfer, and of course without the K.

For various reasons pre-shrinking is not a viable option for carbon, nor is developing a carbon on paper adhered to aluminum.

Sandy


Typical Work Flow for Making Color Carbon Prints
To give the reader some idea of the amount of work that goes into making a color carbon print here is a condensed description of Tod Gangler’s working procedures. These procedures would be fairly typical of most people working with modern pin registrations systems. Modern color carbon differs from traditional forms of color carbon and color carbro in that pin registration is used instead of hand registration, printing is usually done with digitally produced separations, and the system is CMYK rather the CMY.
Steps
1. Prepare the pigmented gelatin emulsions in cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These are prepared in advance in large batches, each batch taking one full day of work. The emulsions are pre-sensitized and coated on polyester sheets.
2. Make the separation negatives. Original negatives or transparences are scanned on a drum scanner, edited in Photoshop with special ICC profiles, and then outputted as contact size separations with an imagesetter at 3600 dpi.
3. The CMYK emulsions are exposed in contact with the separations in pin registration in a vacuum easel.
4. Prints are made using the double transfer system, so the CMYK color reliefs must first be developed on a temporary support. For this Tod uses a sheet of 10 mil polyester which has been sized with hardened albumin.
5. The cyan pigmented emulsion is then wetted and rolled into contact with the double transfer support using a ping registration system. The excess water is rolled out and the sandwich is set aside for about five minutes. Development is carried out by immersing the sandwich in a tray of water at 120F. After a minute the backing sheet is pulled off and the image on the temporary support is gently agitated to remove the unhardened emulsion. Once development is complete the cyan image on the temporary support is placed in cold water to harden and the gelatin, and then set aside to dry. Once the emulsion is dry, the process is repeated with magenta, yellow and black pigmented emulsions, each transferred, processed and dried in register on the temporary support.
6. The final step is transfer of the image on the temporary support to a watercolor paper. Both the watercolor paper and the image on the temporary support are first coated with clear gelatin, and allowed to dry. Once dry, the final support and temporary support are placed in a tray of cold water and brought together emulsion to emulsion. The sandwich is then removed from the water, placed on a glass table, carefully squeegeed to remove excess water, and then set aside to dry. When dry the temporary support is peeled from the image, which at this point has a gloss surface. The image is now wetted again and allowed to air dry, which removes the gloss and gives it a final luster surface that is very attractive.

Hi Sandy

So how are you finding the negatives , I feel that I am getting good resolution with inkjet negatives and good colour when pressed to match.. This is not how Todd Gangler and John are making their negatives but relying on stochastic negs.

Also are you printing one layer on top of each other onto Yupo in register, if not when you say single transfer process I am wondering how you are doing this... do you have three separate tissues that are transferred one after the other to combine to make your colour image.?

I am getting really nice registration without aluminum by pre shrinking , better than I imagined and for me this would be great as it saves the aluminum step.

[sanking]

Bob,

Attached is a .jpeg of an image I am developing with the double transfer method. In this case the Cyan goes down first, next the Magenta, then the Yellow. All of this is done in register. You can see the registration platform inside a 16X20" tray. The platform is made of 1/8" Lexan, and has pin registrations marks on the side for the Stoesser punch. To use I punch the temporary support, either polyester or polyvinyl, and secure it to the pins. The tissues are exposed in register and transferred in register to the platform, then developed. The temporary support stays attached to the platform until all three images have been developed. The developed reliefs must dry before the next relief can be transferred and developed.

In the image attached you see a part image, in which I have already transferred and developed the cyan and magenta tissues. The final tissue, the yellow, will be exposed and developed over what you seen when the previous sandwich is dry. Once the yellow tissue goes on and is developed and dried I will transfer the sandwich to a sheet of cotton rag paper coated with gelatin. This is done in cold water so the gelatin coating is not hardened so that it can expand and come into contact with the relief. All of this is done as described in the previous message.

Sandy