Digital BW, The Print

I have added a scan to print workflow to my web site and I am looking 
for some constructive criticism.  So, if you have the time, I would 
appreciate some feedback.  If you do not want to use the group mail 
to respond, feel free to use the web site's Contact Us e-mail 
address.  The URL for the workflow is 

http://www.zuberphotographics.com/page_Workflow.htm

On a high level, this is a photographer's digital darkroom
workflow.  Specifically, it is a film scan to print to file archive 
workflow.  If you use a digital camera, you can skip the Scan Capture 
steps and start with Artistic Evaluation.

I have tried to balance providing enough detail to be useful and to 
be general enough that it is not printer or computer or OS specific.  
However, the workflow does assume the reader uses the full version 
of Adobe Photoshop.   Not being a Photoshop Elements users, I do not 
know how much of it applies to Elements.  The workflow is for both 
color and black and white images.

For those unfamiliar with workflows, they are a recommended/suggested 
sequence of steps to follow from a pre-determined starting point to a 
pre-determined ending point.  If you are new to the digital darkroom, 
reading a workflow is a good place to start to get an idea of the 
kind of digital skills you will want to learn.

The web page makes heavy use of collapsible lists.  Collapsible lists 
are supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and later and by 
other web browsers that support Dynamic HTML.

I realize people will do the same tasks differently.  For example, 
one person may color correct before cloning, while another may clone 
before color correcting.  Those kinds of minor differences I will not 
be able to capture in a workflow.  However, almost everyone agrees 
that resizing an image for output should come before sharpening for 
output, and a good workflow will reflect these generally accepted 
practices.  

Thank you in advance.

Thomas

Wow! Great job Thomas. What a great primer+!  I'll be spending some time at 
your site.

-Guy

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "rgb2bw" <
jnk0941@e...> wrote:

> 
> I have added a scan to print workflow to my web site and I am looking 
> for some constructive criticism.  So, if you have the time, I would 
> appreciate some feedback.  If you do not want to use the group mail 
> to respond, feel free to use the web site's Contact Us e-mail 
> address.  The URL for the workflow is 
> 
> http://www.zuberphotographics.com/page_Workflow.htm
> 
> On a high level, this is a photographer's digital darkroom
> workflow.  Specifically, it is a film scan to print to file archive 
> workflow.  If you use a digital camera, you can skip the Scan Capture 
> steps and start with Artistic Evaluation.
> 
> I have tried to balance providing enough detail to be useful and to 
> be general enough that it is not printer or computer or OS specific.  
> However, the workflow does assume the reader uses the full version 
> of Adobe Photoshop.   Not being a Photoshop Elements users, I do not 
> know how much of it applies to Elements.  The workflow is for both 
> color and black and white images.
> 
> For those unfamiliar with workflows, they are a recommended/suggested 
> sequence of steps to follow from a pre-determined starting point to a 
> pre-determined ending point.  If you are new to the digital darkroom, 
> reading a workflow is a good place to start to get an idea of the 
> kind of digital skills you will want to learn.
> 
> The web page makes heavy use of collapsible lists.  Collapsible lists 
> are supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and later and by 
> other web browsers that support Dynamic HTML.
> 
> I realize people will do the same tasks differently.  For example, 
> one person may color correct before cloning, while another may clone 
> before color correcting.  Those kinds of minor differences I will not 
> be able to capture in a workflow.  However, almost everyone agrees 
> that resizing an image for output should come before sharpening for 
> output, and a good workflow will reflect these generally accepted 
> practices.  
> 
> Thank you in advance.
> 
> Thomas

This document is a massive undertaking. As a draft it looks very good.
Just some quick notes:

- Font is too large by two to three points.
- No title on the front page. This will prevent high rankings in
search engines.
- Wow that's a huge document and looks overwhelming. Why not make
every section its own page? Additional plus for this method is that
each page can have its own title thereby improving search engine
ranking.

Technical:

When using forced air, be careful to:
+ give the can a burst into the open air before aiming it at anything.
This will clear any condensed liquid that might remain in the tube.
+ never tilt the can.

Not clear why we're converting/assigning profiles when that was
probably done by the scanner already.

Once you "convert to profile" it is redundant to then assign the same
profile.

The first thing I ever do after a scan is to look at the histogram to
make sure there was no clipping.

"perform a capture sharpen" - not clear whether you're advocating the
two step sharpening approach?

In your discussion of pixel depth, I got the (false) impression that
the CMYK gamut is larger than the RGB gamut.

-Pieris
digital darkroom blog: http://www.pmb.net/darkroom

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "rgb2bw"
<jnk0941@e...> wrote:
> 
> I have added a scan to print workflow to my web site and I am
looking 

> for some constructive criticism.  So, if you have the time, I would 
> appreciate some feedback.  If you do not want to use the group mail 
> to respond, feel free to use the web site's Contact Us e-mail 
> address.  The URL for the workflow is 
> 
> http://www.zuberphotographics.com/page_Workflow.htm
>

Pieris,

Thanks so much for taking the time to review.  Below are some 
responses.

- Font is too large by two to three points.
The web page font is intentionally large because I go into a lot of 
detail and I figure a viewer could spend hours reading it.  
Therefore, I wanted to make it easy to view on a monitor.  I 
compensate by making the print friendly pages a smaller, typical 
point size.  The workflow page may be easier to read by displaying 
the print friendly version of it.  Just click the darkroom enlarger 
icon at the top right of the page to display the print friendly 
verison.

- No title on the front page. This will prevent high rankings in
search engines.
The web pages you are viewing are really about four pages included 
into two dynamic web templates.  I use Microsoft Frontpage 2003 and 
somewhere along the way Frontpage no longer allows me to add a 
title.  But I will see if I can add it directly to the code.  
Frontpage does allow me to add titles to the print friendly pages 
(which I have already done), but they are only one page included into 
one dynamic template.  Thanks for the suggestion.

- When using forced air, be careful to:
+ give the can a burst into the open air before aiming it at anything.
This will clear any condensed liquid that might remain in the tube.
+ never tilt the can.
Good suggestion, I will see about adding it as a Tell me more 
collapsible list item.

- Not clear why we're converting/assigning profiles when that was
probably done by the scanner already.
My Nikon scanner embeds its own version of Adobe RGB (1998) in the 
image.  In Photoshop, I convert the image to Photoshop's version.
 I thought if I had to, others may also encounter the same situation.

- Once you "convert to profile" it is redundant to then assign the 
same profile.
Agreed.

- The first thing I ever do after a scan is to look at the histogram 
to make sure there was no clipping.
Good suggestion.  I will incorporate it.

- "perform a capture sharpen" not clear whether you're advocating the
two step sharpening approach?
Actually, I am advocating the three step approach that is becoming 
popular.  Step one, the capture sharpen, tries to restore some of the 
sharpness lost when converting analog to digital.  Step two (under 
Enhancing) is a local sharpening (often called creative sharpening) 
that is done only on select areas of the image that you want to boost 
sharpening over the rest of the image.  And the last step, output 
sharpening (under Pre-Print), is done to `oversharpen' the
image to make up for some loss of sharpness when an image is printed.

- In your discussion of pixel depth, I got the (false) impression that
the CMYK gamut is larger than the RGB gamut.
I see your point.  What I was trying to portray was even though CMYK 
used more bits and bytes, it didn't mean it was the better color 
mode.  I will reword this to make it clearer.

Thanks,
Thomas