Highlight Midtone Shadow and all in between

[bob carnie]

Hi All you digital image makers I am wondering is I can get some advice .. PS that is..

Is there a way in CS3(that is what I use) to quickly see a visual of the shadow, quarter tone, mid tone , 3/4 tone , mid highlight and finally highlight of an existing Black and White file.

What I want to end up on screen is 6 different representations of a scene, localize them and make printing negatives of them..

I have figured out how to do the low end and the high end but I am having trouble with everything in between.

I am using these negatives for multiple hit overtop of palladium.....THINK QUAD TONE TONING WITH SILVER GELATIN... something that I do with silver and I
am trying to work this out for palladium.

thanks

Bob

[Ken Lee]

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/LayerStyle0.jpg

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/LayerStyle1.jpg

You can make a series of separate layers, where each layer is consists of a certain section of the tonal scale.

The first image above contains the whole scale from 0 to 255.

The second image goes from 83 to 151... but you can choose any sections you like.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Ken, that is exactly what I do for my two tone carbons (attempting 3 tone eventually). Works quite well.

[bob carnie]

Ken - looks like exactly what I need thank you , I will report back

[bob carnie]

I would love to see these as well tri tone.

Ken, that is exactly what I do for my two tone carbons (attempting 3 tone eventually). Works quite well.

[Ken Lee]

http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/LayerStyle2.jpg

I forgot to mention that it's very easy to bring up this feature.

Just double-click on any layer (where the red arrow points) and the Layer Style window will come up with the right options already set: the only thing we need to do is adjust the This Layer sliders.

[Peter De Smidt]

134164

Note that you can break up the lf sliders by holding 'alt' on a pc and left clicking and dragging on the the slider. See the picture. This with smooth out the transition.


Another option would be to set up an action that produces luminosity masks and uses these masks to produce the desired layers. These would have less abrupt transitions than the lf slider approach.

[bob carnie]

Could you go more into detail..

Thanks to Ken the Blend if feature looks great for my applications..

When I took Dan Margulis courses he used blend if A LOT but he never broke down an image for this applications and the feature seemed useless for my apps.
I imagine in the right hands it could be a very powerful tool , I need to research this more.

I uses a method of lightening a colour in BW conversion so that I can punch the colour back in .. this was part of my work around.
But I can see with colour the Blend if may be a very powerful tool for isolating colours and using them as extra hit negative.s

134164

Note that you can break up the lf sliders by holding 'alt' on a pc and left clicking and dragging on the the slider. See the picture. This with smooth out the transition.


Another option would be to set up an action that produces luminosity masks and uses these masks to produce the desired layers. These would have less abrupt transitions than the lf slider approach.

[Peter De Smidt]

http://goodlight.us/writing/luminositymasks/luminositymasks-1.html

[Preston]

Thanks for posting the link to Tony's PS actions and masks.

I use them a great deal and find them to be very handy and powerful.

I have played around with the 'Blend If' method a little, but find Tony's masks better suited for me.

--P

[bob carnie]

Ok you photoshop gurus, here is a slightly more complicated question, but to the right person this may be the most silly question of all time.


When we separate in CMYK - we get four channels, one for black detail and the other three subtractive colours.

In the world of ink on press, UCR or GCR is used to lower the amount of pigment (costly) of the three colours by adding grey into the mix.. Therefore the three channels
are slightly off or better stated not as clear , clean and pure as lets say Red Green and Blue from the RGB separations .. by adding the black k the printer can make of more perceived image by the addition of cheaper black ink.

How do I take off UCR or GCR ?- as I convert and then split the channels I see no way of getting rid of this unwanted noise. But this may be as easy as pie, but it alludes me.

I think Greg will have the answer but lets see..

[andy]

Ok you photoshop gurus, here is a slightly more complicated question, but to the right person this may be the most silly question of all time.


When we separate in CMYK - we get four channels, one for black detail and the other three subtractive colours.

In the world of ink on press, UCR or GCR is used to lower the amount of pigment (costly) of the three colours by adding grey into the mix.. Therefore the three channels
are slightly off or better stated not as clear , clean and pure as lets say Red Green and Blue from the RGB separations .. by adding the black k the printer can make of more perceived image by the addition of cheaper black ink.

How do I take off UCR or GCR ?- as I convert and then split the channels I see no way of getting rid of this unwanted noise. But this may be as easy as pie, but it alludes me.

I think Greg will have the answer but lets see..

that's going to be handled by the specific CMYK profile you use--UCR/GCR in the color profile is preventing you from outputting a file with 400% washes of color, in practice though I've never seen this manifest as a real problem--I run a digital offset press (hp indigo) and have been making some experiments playing with the channels and such and haven't had a problem outputting solid washes of 100% color from photoshop--

[bob carnie]

Hi Andy

for my purposes I do not need UCR/GCR as I am doing pure pigment printing gum over palladium, my work is not going to any third party press.

There is no problem getting R G or B but C M and Y seem to have UCR/GCR and I want them clean for my purposes.
Can you point me to a CMYK profile listed in Photoshop that does not have this.

I am pretty sure there is a way of unclicking this function , but I forgot the way to do it.

not a very standard question. Think dye transfer and you will get where I am headed with this question.

Bob



that's going to be handled by the specific CMYK profile you use--UCR/GCR in the color profile is preventing you from outputting a file with 400% washes of color, in practice though I've never seen this manifest as a real problem--I run a digital offset press (hp indigo) and have been making some experiments playing with the channels and such and haven't had a problem outputting solid washes of 100% color from photoshop--

[andy]

Hi Andy

for my purposes I do not need UCR/GCR as I am doing pure pigment printing gum over palladium, my work is not going to any third party press.

There is no problem getting R G or B but C M and Y seem to have UCR/GCR and I want them clean for my purposes.
Can you point me to a CMYK profile listed in Photoshop that does not have this.

I am pretty sure there is a way of unclicking this function , but I forgot the way to do it.

not a very standard question. Think dye transfer and you will get where I am headed with this question.

Bob

It's under "Convert to profile"
set your profile as "custom CMYK" and it opens a dialog box with the controls.

[bob carnie]

Ok thanks - so is it pretty simple to navigate the controls?, I will give it a shot and may get back to you. Us Canadians are a bit slow at the beginning.

Samples of what I am doing are going to be in Brooklyn Photoville this fall I will be there on the 12th and 13th with my client.

Bob



It's under "Convert to profile"
set your profile as "custom CMYK" and it opens a dialog box with the controls.

[andy]

great! Photoville is a lot of fun.

here is a screen grab of the dialog box:
137908

I suspect you'll want to set black generation to maximum and the total ink limit % to 400.

that should do the trick.

[bob carnie]

Ok so the post of Ken's (thanks) was used with great success over this weekend, I think it is a powerful tool for any Pt Pd printer who wants to introduce permanent colour on top of palladium platinum print

http://video214.com/play/nK7IAEMdbQmJVgCmxNGjTQ/s/dark

[bob carnie]

Hi Andy

I would like to discuss this further with you..

right now I am swamped but I would like to see no pollution of the C M Y channel with black

could you explain or demo a bit more your thinking as it is not obvious to me how this will work.

thanks
Bob

great! Photoville is a lot of fun.

here is a screen grab of the dialog box:
137908

I suspect you'll want to set black generation to maximum and the total ink limit % to 400.

that should do the trick.