Digital BW, The Print

I was wondering what methods people are employing when trying to 
adjust the contrast of a narrow tone range, say 5-20%?

To state it another way...if I were to make a traditional silver 
print and wanted to do this, I would be doing a dodge/burn in very 
specific areas (if using a variable contrast paper, yuck ;-) I would 
use a different filter from the main exposure) and afterwards do 
localized reducing (most of you call it bleaching).

I've found myself
A - adjusting curves, generally and repeatedly in small increments. 
B - selecting areas, layer color fill (~25-75%B) set to burn, etc.
C - using the intuitive dodge & burn tool

OThers?  Efficient?
Thanks,

Cleavis

Cleavis,

Your methods A and B are good; C is for "quick-n-dirty". You can select 
ranges using the Selective Color command, too, but beware what happens to 
the borders.

Basically, there are 2 ways to isolate narrow ranges: By area and by tone. If by 
area, you build selections whether manual or automatic. If by tone, you work 
with curves.  The trouble with all this is how to fix the range you want without 
"breaking" the ranges next to it. The safest and most time consuming way is to 
make a manual selection and use that as a mask for a curve.

So, for starters, you should consider a high-bit workflow if you are not using 
layer calculations.  Do as much as you can there. Then, in 8bit,  you can use 
layers so all your curves are editable on a master file and you don't 
repeatedly apply a curve to an area that's already been adjusted and saved. 
In 8 bit you can also use a layer with a copy of the original image with an area 
masked away and then take advantage of the multiply / screen and other layer 
calculations. To that copy layer you can also group a curve to control what the 
multiply etc command does to the image below.


Beware of banding in smooth subtle transitions over a long distance - add 
noise if you have to, but that should be an emergency measure if the result 
needs to be faithful to the original neg, like a darkroom print rather than like a 
painting.


Antonis






--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "lyonscox" <lyonscox@m...> wrote:

> I was wondering what methods people are employing when trying to 
> adjust the contrast of a narrow tone range, say 5-20%?
> 
> To state it another way...if I were to make a traditional silver 
> print and wanted to do this, I would be doing a dodge/burn in very 
> specific areas (if using a variable contrast paper, yuck ;-) I would 
> use a different filter from the main exposure) and afterwards do 
> localized reducing (most of you call it bleaching).
> 
> I've found myself
> A - adjusting curves, generally and repeatedly in small increments. 
> B - selecting areas, layer color fill (~25-75%B) set to burn, etc.
> C - using the intuitive dodge & burn tool
> 
> OThers?  Efficient?
> Thanks,
> 
> Cleavis