QTR-Quadtone RIP

Last night, right after downloading the new QTR realese, I did some 
experiments with the new 3 curves & split-tone feature (I'm using UT3D, 
Epson 2100 & Windows). I think this is a really good addition to QTR.

I'm wondering now what would be the best workflow......

Luckily, I can throw away all my various experimental split-tone 
curves. Making the first one was a bit complicated, but fun. But when 
you start realizing how many different ones you could/should make to 
exploit (some of) the full power of UT3D, that really drives you mad.. 
Although theoretically you now have "only" the possibility to adapt 
shadow, mid and highlights (and no cross-overs in between), my early 
experiments indicate this is more than sufficient. 

Theoretically, one could imagine a workflow with just three curves: 
warm, cool & selenium. But in practice that doesn't work for me. While 
I can envision how let's say a 75/25 warm/selenium blend will look 
like, I can't intuitively figure out in my head precisely a three tone 
mix, for instance how to make this previous blend less saturated by 
adding some cool, while keeping the same hue.

SI made an extra neutral curve and that is very useful for me. With 
these four curves I'm experimenting with two different workflows. 

One is to start of with a neutral print, than gradually add some 
tones , either overal or tonally splitted.

The other one is to decide on the tone/hue first by blending to toned 
curves (again either overall or splitted) and only when satisfied start 
adding some neutral to get the desired saturation (to my taste the 
maximum-gammut tones of the UT3D set are pretty strong and, except for 
warm, they always need at least a bit of saturation).

The last two workflows have in common that you actually split the UT3D 
color space in three parts: neutral-cool-selenium, neutral warm-
selenium and traditional" warm-neutral-cool axis (since the neutral 
point is very near/on the warm-cool axis). In theory One could regard 
this split a bit of a limitation, but in practice only if you want to 
go to three-tone splitting (such as cool shadows, selenium mid tones 
and warm highlights). I have tried a few of these, but presently I 
can't imagine this will become my cup of tea. It's jus t way to much 
for me.    

Wondering what you come up with...

Joost

Joost,

It's nice to see how you've experimented -- that's exactly what I hoped 
for.
Naturally its very subjective for what you like.  One thing I've noticed
and it seems you've seen the same thing is that subtlety is important.
Very obviously different hues are not desirable IMO.

My first ideas were to have say 3 or 4 curves that span the whole 
spectrum
of interest -- like warm, cool, cool-se, sepia.   Then you could mix 
them
to get what you want.   But I've begun to think that we are so sensitive
to neutral that a well constructed neutral curve might be the best 
"core"
of the set of curves.   Then with the other 2 curves to blend in you 
can get nice
subtle variations.

Roy

On Saturday, February 10, 2007, at 05:18  AM, Joost Horsten wrote:

> Sorry about the previous one, pressed "send" by coincidence :-(
>
> Just FYI: got two prints now that I'm pretty happy with.
>
> First setting is a moderate "cool2warm" split-tone: Starting off with
> 100% warm highlights, 50/50 mid tones and 100% shadows. That was way
> too saturated for me so I desaturated it by adding 75% neutral. So
> the end setting was
>   H  M  S
> N 75 75 75
> W 25 13 0
> C  0 12 25
>
> (H=highlight, M=midtone, S=shadow, N=neutral, W=warm, C=cool)
>
> Off course this setting is totally dependent on the image and the
> paper (EEM), but it worked pretty well in this case, really adding a
> some 3D effect to the image. In subsequent print I made the midtones
> and shadows a bit cooler, which further improved the print
> (marginally).
>
> Second setting is a mixed warm-selenium print that I tried before but
> found again way to saturated. I started off with a 70/30
> warm/selenium setting, which is for me a really nice warm tone,
> subjectively even warmer or "deeper" than pure warm. Subsequently I
> desaturated that with 50% neutral, so the end setting was:
>
>    H  M S
> N  50 - -
> W  35 - -
> Se 15 - -
>
> (no split-tone)
>
>
>
-
Roy Harrington
roy@...
Black & White Photo Gallery
http://www.harrington.com

Just FYI: got two prints now that I'm pretty happy with.

First setting is a moderate "cool2warm" split-tone: Starting off with
100% warm highlights, 50/50 mid tones and 100% shadows. That was way
too saturated for me so I desaturated it by adding 75% neutral. So
the end setting was
H M S
N 75 75 75
W 25 13 0
C 0 12 25

(H=highlight, M=midtone, S=shadow, N=neutral, W=warm, C=cool)

Off course this setting is totally dependent on the image and the
paper (EEM), but it worked pretty well in this case, really adding a
some 3D effect to the image. In subsequent print I made the midtones
and shadows a bit cooler, which further improved the print
(marginally).

Second setting is a mixed warm-selenium print that I tried before but 
found again way to saturated. I started off with a 70/30
warm/selenium setting, which is for me a really nice warm tone,
subjectively even warmer or "deeper" than pure warm. Subsequently I
desaturated that with 50% neutral, so the end setting was:

   H M S
N 50 - -
W 35 - -
Se 15 - -

(no split-tone)