wet darkroom vs. inkjet

[bob carnie]

I cannot recall the thread but about a year ago I put my 2 cents in about the ease of using a bulk service provider rather than having someone like me finish the work.
The cost benefits, final vision issues all fall away, its your file, your test and your final print.

Almost all the major labs that I am competing with are offering this bulk service and I can say it is a godsend for the owner printers. No longer am I forced to print every job that comes through the place, no longer do I have to cringe and work on dubious images, now I can let the client deal with their own capture.
Common question was, could you look at my file and tell me whether it will go to 30x40, now I can just have them do a 1 ft mag test for 10 bucks and they can see for themselves.

The benefits are immense to the photographer since they can test , adjust and run just like any professional printer at a price that makes sense,
Following the labs settings for their particular process whether it is bulk, lambda, chromira, lightjet, or inkjet and canvas, simple test strips and *bobs your uncle* you are screen to first test matched.

In our case we do not offer this service for the Lambda Fibre as it is a completely hands on approach , and for this material I inspect incoming files before we accept printing the work, even then there are problems and I cannot dead nut match past prints without a lot of hands on manipulation to the file.
Most of the clients using this service are experienced photographer/printers and archive researchers who are in contact with historical images.
Most of this is gallery work or for show and involves more than one image.

Out of the box , I am impressed with the quality of the new inkjet machines, if I did not own a lab I know I would have a small darkroom to print on enlargers and a small inkjet machine.

[paulr]

I can't imagine using using a bulk printing service if I cared especially about the prints. Last year I worked with a very good printmaker in New York (the first time I've ever done such a thing ... I had to print my first color show, and the project was funded by a grant that would pay for services but not equipment).

I worked the way I print my ink black and white pictures—doing the scans myself, and all the adjustments and soft proofing on my own color-managed system. But then the files went to my printmaker for output.

Maybe a third of the time they came out the way i wanted. The rest of the time, he and I had to work on the files to get the prints to match the soft proof. One of the images took a week of back and forth.

What was special about that image? I don't know. Photography can be weird. I've been similarly tripped up in the darkroom, often by a negative that has no apparent problems.

All in all, soft proofing made the process much more streemlined than darkroom printing, but it was still way too far from "what you see is what you get" to make any bulk service workable.

[bob carnie]

I can't imagine using using a bulk printing service if I cared especially about the prints. Last year I worked with a very good printmaker in New York (the first time I've ever done such a thing ... I had to print my first color show, and the project was funded by a grant that would pay for services but not equipment).


I cannot see why not . If the plots are good with your provider, and you are working with a colour managed workflow.
don't let the name bulk influence you to think it a lesser quality, maybe it should by **you print it service**

Calibrated monitor , proper profile, test print, and final within a limited time period, is exactly how any show is printed. The only difference would be is its you doing the workflow and not a person like me.

If it is taking three times to get close something is wrong with the setup.

One thing to be very clear, timeline is of essence when going to final, we encourage our clients to bring their laptops to the lab after they have seen the prints to make immediate adjustments.

What you may be seeing is the natural ebb and flow of the chemistry, it does change day to day, and calibration must be done each and every day , even when changing rolls. If your provider is punching through lots of chems each day the chances of the plots staying consistant is very good, If they are a small shop like ours you need to be fast as the turnover is not great , and you must print within a calibrations lifespan.

hope this makes sense.. It will to your service provider.

[Brian Ellis]

Much more difficult to learn the skills (scanning and editing in Photoshop or a similar program) necessary to make an excellent ink jet print than an excellent darkroom print IMHO but worth the effort IMHO. I was a very good darkroom printer but the prints I make digitally are to me better. I look at many of my old darkroom prints and see improvements that I could now make in Photoshop that were virtually impossible in a darkroom with the limited tools available there.

[Ken Lee]

I look at many of my old darkroom prints and see improvements that I could now make in Photoshop that were virtually impossible in a darkroom with the limited tools available there.

Precisely !

[Kirk Gittings]

I have beautiful silver prints that I can't quite print digitally to the same equivalent success and superb digital prints from negatives that I could never make work in silver. I like it all and over the last 5 years have always exhibited them side by side.

[paulr]

I cannot see why not . If the plots are good with your provider, and you are working with a colour managed workflow.

I cannot see why not either, but experience shows me that there are unknown unknowns. Prints #1 and #3 may come out exactly as soft proofed, but print #2 will require lots of tweaking.

I can only assume it has to do with innate differences between a printed image and an image on a monitor, some of which do not translate predictably.

One of the images that gave us trouble was this one:



I think I know what was going on here: getting the luminance of the foreground correct was a balancing act between it looking dull and muddy and it looking artificially bright for the time of day, the mood of the image, etc.. What looked good on screen just did not translate well to paper, in spite of all the profiling and calibrating and ease of printing many other images.

Luminance and muddiness are a couple of subjective qulities that are difficult to translate from screen to paper.

[bob carnie]

Luminance and muddiness are a couple of subjective qulities that are difficult to translate from screen to paper.

You got that right. Before we even consider a large show we do test small on the intended paper so that the client can see what the files will look like on the intended output.
There is indeed a lunch bag letdown with certain images and these are the ones that really need consideration in PS and retest.
Trying to translate the luminance or feel of a scene is basically the final consideration and the hardest to achieve.

If you try to translate this across a series of different papers your problems magnify.

Sounds like you have a pretty good service provider , I would suggest the speed of printing seeing the proof , adjustment, proof, adjustment final is critical as things do drift and if it is taking a week, some of these delicate images will be hard to control.
Ink jet does not suffer this drift, but RA4 certainly does and any provider saying their process does not shift are bullshitting .

[Lenny Eiger]

When you guys talk about having it "done right" by a professional printer, I have to wonder just what exactly you're talking about. To pay a "master printer" to do that kind of work for you could easily run in the hundreds of dollars (if you can find one). And even then I'm not convinced they could do better than me, because adjustments they make to "translate" the image to print may not match my own ideas about what the final print should look like.

There are only a couple of reasons to send your work to an expensive printer. In the past, many commercial photographers sent their images to be printed by a lab because they didn't want to bother, or the economics of it made it not worth it for them. They got paid for shooting rather than the time in the darkroom.

When you go to a "master printer" (I prefer journeyman) to print fine art, there are other considerations. Presumably, the person will know more than you about printing and the experience will be both helpful and educational. They may see things in your image that you haven't seen. They often have quite sensitive eyes, much more sensitive that the average photographer. Hopefully, they will know something about history and context. They may suggest another approach - and tell you why. They become a partner in your aesthetic process, doing their best to help you reach your aims.

It isn't for every test print... unless you have the resources for that sort of thing. As to the expensive part of things, Hahnemuhle paper is now $100 for a 17 inch roll, ink is very expensive, the machines are outrageously expensive - think drum scanner - and it takes a lot of research to tune one's system to a top level - to be able to handle a lot of different printing styles. It's more of a labor of love than it is a business model...

For some photographers the reason may be about having a machine that's larger, or printing a whole show with consistency on a perfectly tuned printer, etc. No one can print better than the person with the vision of the final print - IF they have the skills, and the vision. And the hardest part of being a good printer is to print in someone else's style. Engaging with a partner in this process can be terrific.

I prefer to get things ready and make the final images with the person sitting next to me. They have been advised of all the possibilities and they make the final decision. (I end up doing this by Fedex much of the time.)

Whether or not you get a print you like out of WCI has to do with how well you understand their printer setup and some good calibration - which isn't perfect. When you go to a top-level printer, the skills required are communication of your vision, some good listening and patience. I really enjoy the partnerships that come out of it...


Lenny
EigerStudios

[paulr]

Ink jet does not suffer this drift, but RA4 certainly does and any provider saying their process does not shift are bullshitting .

Sure. I'm not trying to suggest that my issues were specific to inkjet. I think they're inherent in printmaking. Inkjet has allowed me to streamline the process in many ways, but it hasn't done away with the need for intervention.

Soft proofing tends to get me 95% of the way there. That last 5% either comes quickly or torturously.