Digital BW, The Print

On Nov 28, 2011, at 9:39 AM, mrjimbo wrote:

> Yup you've got it.. for me sometimes it's hard to explain some things... after seeing your post one more thing.. .. well one of your fancy tools :-).. could measure the paper ...then using Photoshop create the separation necessary for the whites to work with the paper. 

Yes, in developing the software for our "fancy tools" I found it necessary to offer two ramps to white, one that controlled the color as far as it can, then loses to the tone of the paper white at the last minute (the solutions most people expect, and fine for most things,  but which gets ugly when the paper tone and the image content aren't harmonious) and one which starts the adjustment of the white balance further back in the density ramp, so to avoid any jarring last minute changes.

> Polar bears... yes ...I was privileged to shoot them some years back.. sort of like shooting ducks in a barrel from the snow coach but fun non the less. I've always loved bears..

I hesitated to even mention polar bears, it being a loaded subject these days, but slightly buff colored bears against blue-tinted snow is the clearest example of different tints in near whites that I can come up with which is in everyone's memory bank. I'm always amused to see images where someone wasn't happy with the dingy tint in the bear's fur, and "color corrects" them to a nice bluish white to match the snow. They end up looking like little old ladies who have used bluing in their hair. Anyone here old enough to remember hair bluing? I bet you could soak natural watercolor paper in it, and end up with "whitened" paper...

C. David Tobie
Global Product Technology Manager


Datacolor
5 Princess Road
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, USA
609.924.2189
www.datacolor.com

Phone: 207.685.9248
Mobile: 207.312.0448
Fax: 207.685.4455
Email:  cdtobie@...
Skype: cdtobie



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]