Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
GG:
Well when I print them, I'm instituting color management and
I'm able to get the pictures pretty close to what I'm looking for and I'm
pretty happy with the results I see under my GTI light boxes. Occasion-
ally there are issues where you can't quite get it and that has a lot to do
with ink and media. I choose not to print with glossy paper, I go for the
matte papers. I have to be willing to accept slightly less punch in my
images, slightly less range in my midtones, but that's something I've
grown to accept because I like to keep a difference between my silver
prints and my digital prints; they have a distinctively different look.
ADR:
Any words about how you work from capture to output?
GG:
I tend to utilize (Adobe) Camera RAW for creating a so-called
camera profile by taking a group of my images that are shot similarly and
creating a basic standard setup for one image and then batch processing
the rest. But again, it's so subjective like we talked about before. I tend
to like very warm skin tones, I tend to like very strong shadows with
strong blacks, and I'll try to get 80 percent of what I'm looking for in
Camera RAW with most of my global corrections. I ultimately go into
Photoshop in 16-bit so that I have as much of the battle won before I
started. Oftentimes what I'll do in terms of printing my images, even in
terms of ImagePrint (a third-party RIP Greg uses), I work with really great
profiles that ColorByte has created, often I'll create an adjustment layer
to take the image to the next level. I'll often save those adjustment layers
and load them onto other images later and apply them to a series of pic-
tures by dragging and dropping them over these images. Then I know
that series will remain consistent if they were all shot in a consistent
manner. I think color management will get you about 70 to 80 percent
of the way, I think a third-party RIP takes care of another 10 percent and
the last 10 percent is your tweaking the files. It's all very subjective. I
don't think there's any “right way” or “wrong way” of doing this, what-
ever works for you. It's trying to figure out a work flow in relationship
to color management to get to that final image you want to achieve.
ADR:
So you're not expecting color management to allow you, for
example, to shoot something digitally, bring it into Camera RAW, and
what you shot is exactly what you saw on screen?
GG:
No, I think I need to make it look better. First of all, the cap-
tures that you're seeing on the LCD on the camera aren't being shown
as a linear capture from the RAW data so you're seeing compressed infor-
mation. Ironically the JPEGs often look better than the initial RAW files.
The RAW files sometimes need more tweaking then the JPEGs but I know
this is only a starting point. I know I have to be careful with my His-
togram and not clip highlights or pinch my shadows. But I don't expect
my initial captures are going to be right-on just like in shooting trans-
parency or negative. I know in the processing I'm going to have to tweak
the image to get the vision as I really see it. All I can hope for is to capture
