Your attention to detail is always inspiring- and with great timing, as I'm headed into the darkroom this afternoon to work on some prints for a show! Good work as always, Nick.
That's ALWAYS the case. My school has $3600 monitors, totally calibrated, and the best large format canon printers, plus a technician checking them constantly. You just have to make it too light on screen. Test print lots. Excited for your show!!
The printing company I’m with calibrates their printers to the papers as well, and then provides a an ICC profile along for each paper/printer combination. That way, using my calibrated monitor at 100nit, setting the Soft Proofing has always been bang on. I’m a little surpised ProFotoConnection doesn’t seem to provide that on the website.
Of course it's always the case. It's physically impossible to not be the case. One is backlit, the other is not - the way you perceive either is totally different. No monitor in the world can fundamentally change that, even if you might be able to subjectively got close, in your own opinion.
ooh great - suddenly I find I'm in exalted company... I LOVE photo rag for my prints. I feel more expert already! 😅 can't wait for your "hanging" video!
Heck of a ride, Nick! Loving the journey and wishing I could get to the US to see these big’n’beautiful babies in the flesh. You providing the moodful soundtrack for the Gallery too?
Brilliant work! I love those train images! The care needed, i helped frame huge prints, in poor light, dusty condtions! Insanity.All my best wishes for gallery show!
“OCD” eat ya heart out Nick ! Ain’t nothing wrong with your workflow mate, absolutely love what you do and how much passion you’ve put into your work mate. Awesome !
💥Brother, your attention to detail in everything you do is second to none ! That's why you're my favorite RU-vidr and my second favorite photographer. And you were the 1st photography RU-vidr I followed. Good luck with your gallery 👌
You may not have needed to make the shadow adjustments, depending on how well lit the print will be in the gallery. If the lighting conditions you viewed the prints in at home to make the adjustments are going to be identical to the lighting conditions in the gallery, then you're all set. Prints are looking awesome either way!
Good to hear about the screen image to print image i have the same problem, its annoying since i print alot. Just finished a group street exhibit here in Melb and currently have another group exhibit on the go. Thats the round trip though isnt it, photo in the field , then onto the wall, you cant beat it. Your prints are looking so good Nick the exhibition is going to be amazing , hope you do a walk around fir us who live on the other side 😊
That’s some really good advise about the correction profiles you made for your specific paper, plus the combination of printer and ink your tech uses. I used to use a lab in San Francisco, and their starting point for customers with any of the Apple Pro Display was to tell you to set your monitor to the Apple factory standard (that is, default) calibration to prepare the file the way you want. They had all those monitor models in their shop, so that they could compare their printer output on your paper choice to your monitor model and calibration. This method got surprisingly close to what I was seeing at home in almost every print I there. Now that I’ve moved, your approach looks perfect for when I find a new lab.
Great stuff…. and congrats on the exhibit!! I attended a webinar recently where it was suggested that L* values above 90 and below 10 were basically paper white and pure black when printed. So the suggestion was if you didn’t want that to adjust appropriately to pull the areas into the 10 to 90 L* range. I’ve now found some Photoshop actions out there that will put an overlay on showing those areas.
Very exciting! You are rekindling my urges to get out and photograph. Perhaps if the hellish heat abates I will! There is nothing to apilogitfor with insisting on the highest standards with your framing and printing. That is how all serious artists must be. One of my fav recent papers is Hahnemuhle Hemp. Beautiful with amazing B&W contrast. Pricey, but I'm very high on it!
Fantastic job! I print on Epson Hot Press Natural which is also a matte finish 100% cotton paper and it really does take a bit of tweaking to get it right when when the ink dies down. You are a wonderful artist and creator, it’s going to be a great show!!
Great video! Banding on prints when they look fine on the monitor. 8/16/32 bit files/raw/tiff,,, = so many variables - ugh! Looking forward to your exhibition and really think you will be successful.
An old-school solution for banding in the sky was to create a layer copying the sky and add very slight Gaussian noise to it. Also, did you ever take any of the final proof prints to the gallery to see what they looked like in that lighting?
Nice to see your exhibition coming together. Nice work! ❤ Do you really "have to" protect the pigment prints? I put the glass behind the print since the glass is perfectly flat. This way I eliminate reflections. And I figure if someone put their greasy fingers on the print, I will just do another print.
Aren't these test prints why you can ask for printer profiles from your printhouse? Is that not something they offer? Very cool to see this all unfold. You've really motivated me to get some of my pictures printed and I couldn't be happier. Even got the wife convinced when we compared a cheap 'supermarket' printing service to a more 'professional' printing house.
Are you using screen proofing in Lightroom? It makes versioning various adjustments for printing on particular papers a lot easier without making additional adjustments on your original digital image (making it look 'wrong').
I’m sure you’ve looked into it, but I haven’t seen a better black and white print from a digital file than from Digital Silver Imaging. Their fiber prints blow inkjet out of the water.
Great job, Nick! I reside in Ottawa, Canada, and unfortunately, I won't be able to attend your exhibit :(. I must emphasize that selecting the right paper is a pivotal decision; it has the potential to either enhance or diminish the quality of your work! P.S. Nick, remember to shut down the ceiling fan with your PPE equipments, hahahaha!
Not only Andreas Gursky but also Thomas Struth is doing C type prints. If done professionally, I don't think the differences matter much. Additionally: The storage conditions are also very important which is something a lot of people do not consider.
C-Print was the predominant color printing process over 30 years at all levels of photography, any Color Master during that period (William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz, Greg Crewdson, Jeff Wall...) has use it to some extent. Even today has a good chunk of printing business and I continue seeing C-Prints at exhibitions on musseums. Saying it is not "archival" or "fine art" is a complete nonsense.
Exciting! Nick, are you printing your test prints at home or are you sending them to your lab? I'm getting ready for a show myself and I'm at the same place you're at in terms of making final tweaks before final print. Wishing you the best and thank you for your inspiring videos. I can appreciate the amount of time it takes to record, edit, post. Be well! MMM
2:40 I would argue the opposite. Having worked in a handful of photo labs for several years, nothing has convinced me to print anything on inkjet. Chemical prints are the way to go, proven by how long the've been around compared to inkjet/pigment. Not to mention the low maintenance chemical prints require, just a look at your own family prints from decades past.
