QTR-Quadtone RIP

Hi to all,
A special thanks to all of you who wrote back about my WYSIWYG question.
 
 This might be of interest to beginners like myself

 Richard Deskin pointed out ( thanks ) that I might start out looking
at the effect of my screen brightness on approaching WYSIWYG.Whilst in
the process of acquiring a densitometer before having a serious go at
Quadtone ( I haven't found a virtual on screen one that gives anything
else than whole number values hence linearization doesn't seem an
option ) I have done the following experiments.

  Set up is 

  Toshiba Qosmio 30G , Windows XP, graphic card NVidea Gforce GO 7600,
screen calibrated using Huey Pantone Pro, Photoshop CS3 Epson R2400
with K3 inks ( photoblack ),paper permajet 271 gloss ( available in
the uk )with corresponding ICC profile.

  1) EFfect of screen settings on an existing image.
   
   I opened the 21 step in PS, measured the L values with eye dropper.
 Then accessed the graphics card advanced mode which offers the
following settings:
   brightness, contrast,gamma ( also available digital vibrance and
sharpening but i didn't mess with those )
   
  I drastically modified one at a time each setting and observed the
effect on L values of the wedge. Some settings barely allowed me to
see the wedge... but no matter what I did the L values didn't flinch
even when I combined changes.

  I concluded that no matter how the wedge appeared to me, for PS it
remained unchanged! Which implies in the scenario where PS manages the
printer, the wedge or whatever will always print out the same.

  So thinks me,how can those settings matter ? 


 2)Instead of the wedge I opened a picture of a tree trunk bathing in
fairly harsh morning light)that goes from the deepest blacks to pure
white at the base of which I placed the wedge. ( If I knew how I would
make that available to picture to all )

  Modified screen settings and saw how it varied from washed out to
almost pure black.

 I concluded that the screen settings determined the adjustments I
made to it's L values to make it look good to me on that screen. What
I needed to know, was how the printer managed by PS sees those L
values. Easy ,look at the print!
 
3)I re-calibrated the screen using Huey , and in PS made that tree and
wedge look as good as possible on the screen. I printed the image 
letting photoshop manage the printer with ICC profile supplied by
permajet.

  The print was much darker and contrasty than on screen

  I then modified the contrast and brightness of the screen so that
the on screen picture looked as much as possible as the print.

  Then, I re-edited that picture to make it look as best as possible
on the screen once again mainly by using levels adjustment layers.

  I then printed this new version and to my great satisfaction print
and screen were not so different. The second print led me to fine tune
my settings to get even closer to WYSIWYG.

 Conclusion: those settings have a massive impact on approaching WYSIWYG

 Problem: I figured, this is fab, with my new Graph card settings for
brightness and contrast, that I saved as "inkjet gloss ", I'll
recalibrate using Huey and my relationship between my hardware and I
will bathe in heavenly bliss!
 Bad idea, it seems that huey overrides the graphics card and resets 
contrast and brightness to it's own liking. When you reboot the
computer, the desktop appears as per contrast and settings of card
till Huey kicks in. 
 Solution, tick "uncorrected" in the Huey Preference panel. 

  Hope this is useful and welcome all comments
   regards
     Christophe

While your approach may be yielding some good results, I'd want to avoid
any technique that relied that much on tweaking your system. 

Monitor brightness, room lighting and print viewing lighting are vital
components of getting a consistent print workflow. Whilst I'd not personally
choose to use the huey, it's better than nothing - and whatever you do,
turn off that ridiculous 'change my monitor settings when the sun goes
behind a cloud' setting. The fact that the huey overrides your tweaks is
exactly what it -should- be doing... 

Whilst I use soft proofing quite often in colour work, I rarely ever use it
for B/W.  Since I've got two main printers (Epson 9600[Mk] and 7880[Pk]) I
can produce a wide variety of B/W prints on different papers. My own
preference is to print a known B/W test image on different papers and get
to know how they look under a known consistent light source.  Working
from a calibrated/profiled screen I then have a much better 'feel' for how
any particular image will look as a print.

The image on the screen is (IMHO) only ever an intermediate stage in getting
to the print I want - I find that placing too much concern of soft proofing
and WYSIWYG means I'm not concentrating enough on the final print. You
mentioned you have plenty of darkroom experience, I prefer to think
of the image on the screen as similar(ish ;-) to getting a good negative.
A lot of my paper/ink/printer choices are analogous to picking a paper
and what to do with it in the darkroom (BTW I wouldn't want to push the
analogy too far! ;-)

That said, my B/W work has improved a lot since going digital, and in
my commercial photo work (mostly colour) I haven't touched film for 4
years.

I think the key to consistency in my own printed work comes from
adopting a colour managed workflow, and making sure that things like
room lighting and print viewing lighting are also pretty constant. You
don't need to spend a lot on lighting, I recently looked at the GrafiLite,
which is based on the Ott-Lite 'task lamp'. It is ideal for viewing A4 test
prints of the type I have for all my B/W papers. The constant light allows
me to quickly compare papers and decide which fits the 'feel' I want for
a particular image. I still do test strips with parts of images on paper
(particularly if it's a big print) but it doesn't take much practice to get
a 'feel' for how an image will look (having a known test image helps)

Hope that helps somewhat?

Keith Cooper

PS I've written some short articles expanding some of what I've
mentioned above, that might be of interest?

My test B/W image is at:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/black_and_white_test.html
Some thoughts on the GrafiLite:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/reviews/lighting/grafilite.html
Why screen and prints don't match:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/match_prints_to_screen.html
Room lighting for image editing:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/room_lighting.html