Digital BW, The Print

Garry

I'm sure there are a million ways to make an image sepia, and I'm really not
sure what the problem with your way is. Sounds like every thing is fine
until you view the histogram? Then don't view the histogram. ;-)

I'm using the MIS VM sepia mix, with pretty good results. If you send me
your address I'll send you a print, so at least you'll know what the color
is like. And yes, I realize you are on the other side of the planet...

If I were adding the color to an RGB image for RGB printing I think I'd do
it with curves set to color mode (which leaves your tonality intact) working
with the red channel (raise it) and blue channel (lower it) to get the
flavor. When you get a curve you like save it and load it for future use.

Chances are if your image is looking good onscreen but lousy in print it is
because of a poor printer profile, metamerism, or other print related
matters. That's obviously a huge generalization so I'm not betting on it,
but I'm really just trying to separate your problem into one at the file
creation stage and one at the printing stage.

So just what is the problems you experience? Are you prints looking good, or
not? If so forget about the histogram, if not, where do you see the problem?

Todd
tflash@...

> Sepia bloody sepia
> 
> Someone tell me if they have a better idea and what the hell I am
> doing.
> 
> I've been fiddle farting around with this sepia thing for months. My
> heart yearns for the tuth. My intention has been to try a get it
> close on a desktop before purchasing larger. I am thoroughly spoilt
> as I print B&W Neg onto colour RC Paper and filtrate to get a rich
> goldern sepia and it gives me the total poops trying to get close to
> that with inkjet.
> 
> I start with a black & white neg scan.
> 
> A "not bad" method I have tried is to start with a desaturated RGB
> image off the B&W neg and adjust colour - shadows, midtones &
> highlights equally. I will get horrible crossover before I even
> start if you just try mids.
> 
> My sepi is very rich, so my settings were 20y 15r each. Try
> proportionally less if you want weaker. This leads to another
> problem. If I have the "Preserve Luminosity" checked, the levels
> change quite drastically, sometimes actually chopping off the shadow
> end of the histogram, if I leave it unchecked it just does weird
> things. In any case, I figured that I  must adjust the histogram at
> the very end of the process and make sure it is intact. If it isn't
> then I try this -
> 
> I found that if I converted to CMYK and then did the same colour
> adjustment, my histogram was left fairly intact and then just
> switched back down to RGB again for final output. My next step is
> the MIS sepia neautal inks with a guess at which curves to use. Paul
> suggests 1280 for my 890 but they're not fully refined as yet.
> 
> I may be doing this all wrong but when I have tried duotones, the
> histogram is devistated. Channel mixer is also useless to me as I
> start with a B&W neg. What else is there? I seem to have no response
> when I put up a post.
> 
> This sepia bizzo seems to be the hardest thing to get to grips with.
> 
> 
> Garry Sarre
> 
> www.sarre.com.au
> 
> 
> 
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