Ask Brooks

Preservation

Just wondering if you have any ideas for adhesives and protective finishes for photographs that will not be encased behind glass.

-- Lauren

   

The Buddhists have a term anitya, meaning impermanence. The concept behind it is that life is change. All things change. Try as we might, we cannot stop change. Indeed, change is the essence of life. This is not just philosophy, but practical, too; even preserved in the freezer, the ice cream eventually gets too old to eat.

Photographs are no different. We can do our best to make them "archival" but it is an illusion. Anything produced on paper will dissolve, and fairly quickly. Badly produced and handled prints might last a decade before they fade. Meticulously produced ones might last a dozen or more decades, maybe. To the fruit fly, both are an eternity. To the art consumer 500 years from now, both are fleetingly short. It's all a matter of scale.

I decided early in my career that this was not worth losing sleep over. Sure, I use the best materials I can find. Sure, I pay attention to the papers and chemicals I use to make prints. I strategically use software formats that have the best chances to be accessible in the near-term future. But fundamentally I've found it more productive to think of my photography as a performance rather than an archeological specimen. Besides, if they last into the distant future, I'll be no happier because, ahem, I'll be dead. I find it much more productive to concern myself with the image as perceived now, by people living now, in the present moment.

I prefer to display my work without glass because they look best that way. I'd rather have them look their best now than have them exhibited with a compromise (glass) that diminishes the visual experience but preserves them so that someday, somewhere they might be seen by somebody, somehow, probably behind glass, again visually compromised. Let them live! Let them shine in the sun for a day! Let them breathe and have a chance to delight some viewer today, while they can.

I don't spray my prints with "protectants" or preservatives. If, in the course of exhibition, they become damaged, well, I'll print them again if it's important for me to do so.

Besides, I simply cannot take myself and my artwork so seriously -- not with a straight face. I suppose somebody might someday take my work seriously and believe it needs to survive for the innumerable benefits it would bestow on future generations of art-starved masses. I would be tempted to bonk such a somebody on the head with my tripod and advise them to get a life.

It's funny, but one of the qualities that is most prized on the Antiques Road Show is the patina of wear and time. Nothing devalues an antique like cleaning it up and applying a fresh coat of varnish. Too bad we can't learn to accept this line of thinking about photographs. Maybe the dings and flaws acquired over time should be considered the venerable characteristics that show the photograph has been well used and enjoyed by its previous owners.

Pinwheel marks on prints

I'm having some issues with an old Epson R1800. The printer is leaving roller marks in my prints when I print on either Hahnemuhle Fine Art or Harman Glossy papers. (The little pin wheels.) It's driving me crazy to the point of maybe getting a new printer, but not giving up just yet. Any helpful insights would be a great.

— Christopher Bell

I know exactly what you are talking about. We've seen this, too, especially in areas of solid darks like night skies. It manifests as a regular series of tiny, white, regularly spaced dots. It took us a while to figure out that they are positioned on the page right where the ejection rollers are and the white dots are spaced exactly as are the spokes in the wheel. We call them "pizza marks" because the roller wheel sort of reminds us of a pizza cutter.

In our Epson 4880 printers, we can eliminate them simply enough by manually raising the ejection bar before the paper starts to touch it. We simply push up on the bar and it pops back into the resting position. Pizza marks gone. We only do this on prints that have solid blacks that will make the marks visible. Unfortunately, we have to do this with every single sheet we print that has those tonalities.

Whether or not this simple resolution will work with your printer is a matter of experimentation. Are the wheels on a bar? Can you reach the bar? Will it allow you to lift it up while the print is ejecting? You'll have to experiment with your printer.

The real question is why the manufacturers haven't addressed this troublesome aspect of their products.

Why put text on folio images?

On the topic of folios, I think it is a great idea and I think it is gaining popularity. I have to say though that I find the artist name and other lettering on each image rather off putting. In a way I am surprised of your design choice, given your usual ethos of the humbleness and modesty of the artist. It reminds me of cheapo Ikea or office "motivation" photo posters or even banner advertising. In a way it is advertising for the artist really, which for me introduces a branding or commercial aspect and takes away from the image itself. I believe that the artist name and info belongs on the back. If one were to frame the prints, surely the text would/should be cropped out.

— Dirk

Thanks for the feedback. I understand your comments, but there are several reasons we include text on the folio images:

1. Should an image ever be separated from the folio for any reason, it would lose its identity and origin.
2. We think of folios as something between a book and original artwork; text in this context seems okay.
3. With so many photographers producing their original artwork using the same technology (pigment prints) that we use, we feel it is important to distinguish our prints as being something different from their originals. Since these are not signed by the photographers, this text seems an acceptable way for them to be identified.
4. The common text on each image ties the various images in the folio together as a whole.

As you say, should someone choose to mat the prints for framing, they can choose to include or exclude the text components — and we do the layouts that way on purpose.

As to text on the back, this is possible and we do hand-write titles on the back of the Chiarenza folio, for example, but generally prefer the text on the front as part of the design. Besides, typeset text is more readable than my lousy handwriting! Besides, if the text were on the back, matting with the text visible is no longer an option.

I do appreciate your thoughts about this. I fact, in some of my personal work, I do folio images (originals, in this case) without the text, so you can see I do agree with you in some cases.

Comparing analog to digital

Do you believe that digital black & white has now reached the quality of black & white film?

— Mark Olwick

This wins the award for the most succinct question of the decade. I wish my answer could be as clear and straightforward.

Yes — assuming you are talking small film negatives and relatively small prints.

No — if you are comparing large format negatives (4x5 or larger) and/or large scale prints.

There are many who will disagree.

For me, it all boils down to reverse engineering. In my work, I tend to be interested in photographing images that look best in a small scale — typically hand-held work in the 8x10" print size or even smaller. I simply do not make large prints. A really big one for me is 11x14. With this as my criteria for prints, digital capture has plenty of resolution, detail, and all the technology I need. With today's papers (as of about late-2007 or so), I'm very happy with the prints I can make, too — relative to detail, texture, black densities, etc.

So, with all these caveats in mind, yes, digital b/w has now reached the quality I used to achieve with film and gelatin silver prints. I would compare any of my results from 2¼x3¼ negatives on gelatin silver to my current images made with digital cameras and printed on Epson printers and call it a pretty even horse race — if the prints are the hand-held size I've always made.

In fact, in some regards digital has exceeded my analog efforts — in areas like tonal versatility (so many brown tones to choose from!), ease of production and reproduction, physical comfort for the producer (me!), and fine control and finesse of image manipulation (i.e., dodging and burning and the like in the process of making a final print.)

I am incredibly lucky that my interests in printmaking do not motivate me to create large scale prints. If I wanted to make 20x24 or larger prints, I'd be hard-pressed to forego an 8x10" view camera. The detail and tonalities possible in such large scale negatives are to drool over when making large prints. There is just so much information encapsulated in an 8x10" negative that a digital camera has a hard time competing with it.

Having said that, there are digital solutions that people are using that make some pretty spectacular results. Stitching images comes to mind. Large format digital sensors are pretty amazing if you have the bank account for them. Large format Epson printers make giant prints that are pretty special. I don't have any personal experience in using any of these tools because they simply do not match well with my interests in making prints, so I'm not really qualified to compare digital to analog with any authority. But from the results I've seen of others work, I'd have to admit that there is some very nice work being done digitally in large scale prints. Comparable? I'm not even sure how to begin such comparisons.

What I do know for sure is that any equipment handled with the knowledge and care of a meticulous craftsman is better than better equipment in the hands of the sloppy and careless. Can one make great photographs with analog equipment? No doubt. Can one make great photographs with digital equipment? You bet. Can the exact same equipment and tools make lousy photographs? Far too often, and far too easily. Can one choose any tool to make any kind of photograph? Well, that's a question that is far too prejudiced by the type of final print and result one wants to make to be a meaningful question.

Sorry my answer is not as precise as the question, but it's simply too complicated an answer to distill into a simple yes or no.

Black Marks on the Paper Edge

I believe you are using an Epson 4880 or some such model. I am using an Epson 3800 and the Harman Gloss FB Al paper. Beautiful prints but I'm getting black ink marks on the edges of the paper. Any good fixes?

— Donna

Two possible solutions to try:

• Sometimes the paper out of the box has a slight curl to it, always curling up toward the emulsion side. This means the paper isn't perfectly flat when it goes through the printer. Try "reverse curling" the paper against the edge of the table to flatten the paper — particularly the four corners — before printing. We do this on every sheet, even 17x25" sheets. It takes a delicate touch to do it without creasing the paper, but you'll get the hang of it quickly enough. Also, be sure to wear cotton gloves when handling the paper so you won't get oils from your skin on the printing surface.
• Try increasing the "platten gap" which will raise the print head a little higher above the paper. This control exists so the printer can handle different thickness of paper. It may be that yours is set a tad narrow for the paper you are using.

  To be honest, I never worry about this specifically because we always trim our prints after printing. This assures that

  • any tick marks on the edge are eliminated,
  • makes perfect edges that eliminate any imperfections due to handling,
  • makes perfectly sharp and pointed corners, and
  • assures that every sheet in a finished project is exactly the same size regardless of any batch inconsistencies from the manufacturer.

  Yes, it does mean that our prints are smaller than the sheet on which they are printed, but I think it's worth it.

  BTW, this is also why we print on 17" paper for our folio prints — we can print 4-up which means that the center lines are common cuts without waste. Note trim marks in this layout.

  
   
  

Grayscale or RGB?

Are you outputting your PDFs as grayscale or as a RGB files?

— Dieter Wilkinson

There is some confusion in the question. PDFs are not grayscale or RGB. The images contained in a PDF may be either — or you may have a PDF that has both types in the same document. PDFs are simply containers that define a layout, but the components can be almost anything — vector graphics, raster graphics, audio or video, form fields, etc.

I think what you are really asking is about monochromatic (b/w) images and whether they should be grayscale or RGB — typically set using Photoshop's "mode" command. Again, there are differing schools of thought about this, but I always use RGB. I'm not even sure the concept of a neutral grayscale-only image exists in the real world of prints. Even in the wet darkroom work I did for so many years, all so-called b/w images had a touch of color to them even when I wanted them to be perfectly neutral. Untoned gelatin silver is slightly greenish. Selenium toned images tend to the slightly purple side. I often used Kodak Brown Toner or Polytoner to give a warm tone to my prints. Perfectly neutral gray is essentially impossible.

If that's the case, then using RGB and making b/w images on-screen that have just the slight color bias you use in printing makes sense. There is also the added benefit that the tones you achieve in your prints can be matched on-screen with a careful RGB setting that tint your digital images to match your prints. Within the limits of calibration and monitor variance, your on-screen image then more closely match your prints — for example on web page presentations or in PDFs.

This gets a touch confusing when it comes to printing. Because I use Epson's ABW to control the tint of the printed image, the RGB tint that I see on-screen is essentially discarded during the printing process. Whether you send ABW a grayscale or an RGB image makes no difference; the final "color" of your tinted b/w print is controlled entirely by the ABW driver. If you want to verify this, print a full-gamut color image using ABW.

Essentially, by making your digital files RGB, you can have parallel worlds that don't mess each other up.

• RGB mode digital files allow you to have on-screen images with any monochromatic tint you want;
• Using the ABW settings in your Epson printer to control the printed tint of your b/w images, any RGB settings in the digital file are discarded.

It's a neat workflow that allows us the best of both worlds without having to have one digital file for printing and another for on-screen use.

So, my workflow is to use RGB images for everything. My PDFs, web images, etc. look like my prints because I use an RGB tint that simulates the printed image.

BTW, I typically do this by applying a Lightroom preset for a "grayscale split-tone" — easy, simple, instantaneous. Don't let this confuse you, however. A Lightroom "grayscale" is still an RGB-mode image, just with a zero color saturation. The "split tone" controls in Lightroom are a handy way to add a slight color tint to the desaturated RGB.

Here is my "split tone" setting that simulates the warm-tone we use in LensWork. Note that both the highlights and shadows settings are identical. It's not really a "split-tone" because they are not split. Using identical shadows and highlights settings creates an effect that is similar to old-fashioned toning in the darkroom where the entire image is affected simultaneously with a single tint, only the intensity of the tint varying with the density of the different areas of the monochromatic print.

I have several Lightroom presets depending on the tint treatment I will use in the final print — that is, which ABW setting I will use to create which of the several "brown tones" I use in my prints. Some lean more to the red side of brown (like LensWork), some lean to the yellow side of brown. I like different settings for different projects, but I always use only one warm-tone per project so all the prints match. The trick then is to use the ABW settings when printing that match the Lightroom preset or my prints will look different than my on-screen images — which of course I'm free to do if I want to, but generally don't.

One final comment. It is, theoretically I suppose, possible to have a workflow that uses RGB images, apply a tint to them (warm-toning for example) and then print them as full-gamut color images rather than using the ABW settings. Applying carefully calibrated ICC profiles to this workflow would allow you to print your "RGB color images" as "full-gamut color prints" and perhaps get a match in print to your on-screen rendition. Tortuous, but possible. For me, it's just so much easier to print the tones I want with ABW and then reverse engineer a Lightroom preset that approximates those printed tones into my monochromatic RGB on-screen images.

Of course, if you want true "split tones" — where the shadows are one tint and the highlights a different tint— then RGB full-gamut color printing is the only way to go and ABW will not work. ABW is only for uniform tinting throughout the entire printed image.

So, to recap this 900+ word response in just four words: grayscale bad, RGB good.

Proofing paper

My question has to do with print proofing paper. You use two very expensive (at least very expensive to me) papers for your folios, Hahnemühle Photo Rag and Harman Glossy FB AL. Presumably you are like the rest of us that have to make any number of proof prints prior to being "done."  If in fact you do print proofs, which papers do you use and how do you make adjustments for your final prints.  Of course I am assuming you don't use the expensive papers for proofing.

— Roger

Choke. Cough. Cringe. Sniffle and weep. For proofing, I open my wallet and run cash through the printer by the bucket full, figuratively. Thanks for asking.

Like everyone else, I would dearly love for so-called "soft proofing" to work. Wouldn't it be great to look at an image on the monitor and have it turn out identical when printed! Boy, wouldn't it! Never going to happen.

The only way I know to determine how a print will look is to print it. The only way to determine how a print will look on Hahnemühle Photo Rag is to print it on Hahnemühle Photo Rag. Period. There are no shortcuts. There are, fortunately, a couple of things that can help reduce costs a little bit.

1. Print proofs on a lighter weight (less expensive) version of the paper you will use in your final prints. For example, use HPR 188 rather than HPR 308 and you can reduce your costs from $1.51 to $1.13 per 8½x11 sheet and save 25% (prices from Shades of Paper.com).
2. Try doing proofs on double-sided paper. Bleed-through can be a bit of a problem, but it will save some money. Double-sided, lightweight paper helps a lot, but it's still not what I would call cheap.
3. Print your proofs ganged on a larger sheet with narrow borders. You can do two versions of this: one version reducing the image sizes to 4x5 or smaller that will give you some sense of color balance, color gamut, color profiles, tonal densities, and perhaps where you might need to do some density adjustments like dodging and burning; then do a second version where you crop out a 4x5 section or smaller of the larger image so you can check sharpening at full size. (For sharpening, I often find I don't need to see the entire image to know if I've got it right.)

The one thing I've never been able to do successfully is proof on one paper and then print my final images on a different paper. Paper base-color, ink rendition, metachromatism, etc. all get in the way of making good judgments that are reliable.

So, sorry, but photography is an expensive hobby. (I am jealous of the pen & ink drawers in this regard.)

Let me offer this small seed to a large discussion. Costs in photography are "expensive" or "inexpensive" only relative to the income one derives from the sale of work. I cringe at having to buy expensive paper for proofing, but I can and do because I work very hard to make my work affordable so people will buy it from me. It's that source of funding that allows me to buy the paper I need to produce new work. Without that source of funding, photography would be so much more "expensive." So, as foreign as it sounds to the artmaking process, I believe marketing and selling our work is crucial to the creative process because without the ability to buy supplies, equipment, travel, etc. our creativity comes to a halt. In an odd way, the answer to expensive paper is inexpensive prints. But therein lies another discussion entirely.

Printer Settings for Folio Text Pages

Hi Brooks,
I am really enjoying working through your Folios and PDF Publishing video workshops. I am well on my way to completing my first folio.
I was wondering how you go about finding print settings for making the folio text pages using standard paper. I am not familiar with how to make high quality printed pages when using paper that does not have a readily available ICC profile or suggested settings. In my case I am using Neenah Oxford 80# Cover stock and an Epson R2400 printer. Can you offer some advice?
Thanks & Best Regards,
John Motzi


Are you thinking about printing images on the Neenah paper? If so, I agree you'll probably need and ICC profile — which you would have to develop yourself. On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend it. These kinds of art papers are not intended for image printing and without the kinds of coating that allow for the fine dots used in image printing, I think the results would be pretty bad even if you could use a profile that would give you accurate colors. I'm not even sure you could do that.

We use text paper like this for text only — typically black text only — for which a profile really isn't necessary. Black is black. You can probably use any old settings for black text and get away with it.

Of more importance might be the gap head distance (if the text paper is really thick or really thin). If you use a PDF workflow like we do, it is a good idea to check the box in the PDF printer dialog that forces all text to black.

Hope this helps.

Brooks

Paper choices for LensWork Folios

What is or are your main reason(s) for choosing between Hahnemühle Photo Rag and Harman Glossy FB?         — Jacek Łuc

Making artwork is an activity that involves aesthetic choices that are difficult to analyze — and impossible to quantify. We choose the paper that "feels right." Fuzzy, I know, but it's what we do.

With each print I make (of my personal work) or with each folio that we produce as part of the LensWork Special Editions Collection, we print on both papers and then compare. Hahnemühle Photo Rag is a lovely matte surface paper that creates textured blacks without any sheen. It tends to make images that drink the light and have more of the feel of the paper as an artifact. For some images, some portfolios, this approach just looks and feels best. In contrast, Harman Glossy FB is a shiny paper that looks and feels a lot more like traditional gelatin silver papers from the wet darkroom. It tends to make images that seem sharper, more like traditional photographs. In addition, because of the glossy surface the blacks become much blacker which gives this paper a greater contrast — at least measurably. Ironically, because of the sheen in the blacks prints on Harman Glossy FB don't always appear to be blacker than a matte paper because the sheen adds light to the darker areas. Sometimes this adds an intangible feel to the dark areas in the print as though there is more light in the deep shadows.

All of this is an unsuccessful attempt to describe what is best experienced by just looking. This is why we always print test prints on both papers. We look, we study, sometimes for days, and then decide which paper best creates the artifact that most expressively carries the content.

One other element that's worth mentioning was taught to me by the late Oliver Gagliani. He described how one paper would carry the image across the room more successfully than others. He would make his prints (in his case, gelatin silver prints from the wet darkroom) on several different papers and then line them up on the wall and look at them from a distance of 10 to 15 feet. He said this often influenced his final selection of which paper he would use for a given image because from that distance it became obvious which paper did a better job of carrying the content across a distance. When I first heard him describe this, I was skeptical. But experience has demonstrated that he was absolutely right in his observation. We'll do this test when deciding whether or not an image should be printed on matte paper or glossy paper. Sometimes, from across the room, the difference is so startling as to make us question why we couldn't see it up close!

In fact, this is precisely how we chose Hahnemühle Photo Rag and Harman Glossy FB as our two basic papers. Comparing Photo Rag to all the other matte papers using this "across the room" test, Photo Rag was clearly the best of the matte papers. Similarly, Harman Glossy FB simply outperformed all the glossy surface competitors. From time to time we purchase new papers as they are introduced to the market, test new manufacturers, try new printers, etc., but so far we've never found anything that looks better than the combination of the Epson K3 inks on these two papers. Undoubtedly times will change, but for now these are our standards.