Quiet Light Publishing Blog – Page 14 – Richard Mack on Publishing, Photography & Fine Art Printing

February 22, 2009February 22, 2009

Painful for a Photographer – Converting to CMYK

I am at the point in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapesbook project where it is time to convert the images into the CMYK color space for the press. It is a very painful process. As photographers we see in a full spectrum of colors, shoot for the widest range in the color spectrum, in 16bit Raw files, import them into Photoshop in ProPhoto color space (you do use this now don’t you?) all of which gives us the largest color space we can have. This provides for beautiful images onscreen and in our fine art prints. But the book world uses the color space for commercial presses, the world of four to six color presses and the world of CMYK, a much smaller color space than we work in. So we suffer the long slow pain of watching our colors disappear when we hit the Convert to CMYK button.

Any color out of gamut (outside the target color space) will be clipped into the CMYK color space, which for me in this case is usually the bright yellows and greens of that early morning light in the leaves. So, after getting up early to be there for the golden light, taking care to bring the colors to life in Photoshop and having things look great, we end up cringing as we hit that Convert to CMYK color space. I am converting to the CMYK color my press has specified for their use, basically SWOP coated. So how do you get back some of the colors which have been clipped?

Well, if you look online for answers, you will find everyone has a different opinion. So here is how I have come to process images. Once you have your final RGB file set (and saved), flatten the layers and then take a look at it. Click the Preview button on and off to get an idea of what things will turn into and I have on occasion then upped the saturation of the greens only by about 10% and then converted to CMYK, although this seems to work only occasionally.

As you hit the convert button, please, and this is important, utter the words “bye bye color”.

Most often the beautiful light yellow greens will turn into a cyan bluish color. So what now? I go to the levels and change the cyan levels slightly starting with the middle which I put at 1.00 or 1.15 then adjust the high and low sliders to taste. Then select Hue/Saturation and once again go to the greens and yellows separately and up them 10-20% be careful though you don’t go too far and wash out detail. You might want to also add some black in the greens and/or on the black channel as well. You might find there are more things to try as well, maybe in the curves adjusting each channel separately, or going into the selective colors and adjusting the Cyan and yellow levels in the green layer. Depending on the image you are working on it may take any combination of these actions. Make sure you save it as a different named file – I put CMYK at the end of the file name. No most likely you still won’t be happy with the results but they should be fairly acceptable.

One last thought. Don’t go back and forth between the original file or transparency and try to match it. You won’t be able to. All you can do now is make it look as good as you can given the smaller color space you have to work with. While this is something all of us photographers hate to think about – our work not being shown at it’s absolute best, have faith that your printer will be very good at what they do and things will turn out alright – especially if you’ve selected the right printer to work with. And remember, every photographer who has had work printed in any form has faced this dilemma at some point. I happen to be lucky enough to have an original Ansel Adams print, one which is also in one of his early books. While the reproduction in the book is very good, it does not compare with the original print. So he had the same problem.

On my last book, The Lewis & Clark Trail American Landscapes I worked with Stinehour Press and they made the separations from the original transparencies. There I had the magic of John Stinehour to help. They have, sadly, gone the way of many presses in the United States and are no longer around. I could say to John – “It needs your magic to make it pop” and he would do something and it would happen. There are moments in this process I wish I had John and his wisdom sitting next to me telling me what to do. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes book is mostly digital images which I am now converting for our new printer CS Graphics. And I am confident they will be able to make these images as beautiful as before, but I still hate it when I push that Convert to CMYK button.

Peace,

Richard Mack

February 17, 2009February 22, 2009

Choosing the Cover Image

For the last few months I have been hard at work editing the images for my next book Great Smoky Mountains National Park: Thirty Years of American Landscapes. Part of the process of course is editing your work, both in deciding what images to use in the book, and then in working with each image individually to achieve the best possible printed piece. While this later part is done in Photoshop – it is much like being in the darkroom and making sure the “print” you end up with is what you had pre-visualized in the field.

I recently was on a friends blog where he talked about editing film and how there was a space of time between when you took the image and when you finally had a chance to see the image in film form after processing. His thought was that the distance in time helped you make better decisions about the images because the emotion of the day when you shot it was not as fresh. There may be something to that, especially in the day of digital photography where folks tend to edit their work even while it is still in the camera! This is never, never to be done! How can you tell what it really looks like on a 2” low resolution screen? It’s great for making sure your close on the exposure – although the histogram is better – I would never delete an image based on what I see at that point. But I digress.

Having worked on images from over a thirty year time span I have found the same emotions, or at least ones close to them come streaming back as I look at the images. I happen to be able to remember almost everything about a photograph I have taken – too bad I can’t remember things like that in real life – but it makes it easier for me to remember what I wanted the photograph to say and thereby make the correct adjustments to an image. Creating an image which comes as close as possible to what I was feeling and intended the image to look like in the first place.

The hardest part of editing is deciding which images should make the grade and be in the book. An example is the cover shot. Because of its importance it also has some additional requirements which must be met. It has to pull people in, take it off the book store shelf and make them want to open the book. Therefore, I tend to look at the covers of similar books, in this case other photographic books on Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I do this because I don’t want my book to look like theirs. I look for an image which will say something about the book but also have a more artistic bend to it. I had a working cover image for a long time from a shot I really loved. But when all was said and done it did not make the grade. Another shot seemed to work better and had a more emotional pull for those who saw all three covers (hey we started with a lot more ideas but narrowed it down to three before subjecting folks to give their opinions).

I think in some ways, my friend might have been right about distance and time in editing at least in this case. I let go of an image I really liked and had an emotional attachment to. And now that I see the new cover image I like it even better than my first choice. So what is your opinion – let me know – I’d love to hear your opinions too!

Peace,

Richard

December 24, 2008

Remembering at Arlington – Pan Am Flight 103

On December 21^st, about 500 folks gathered at Arlington Cemetery, the site of the National Memorial Cairn, a gift from the people of Scotland to the United States honoring the 270 victims of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland twenty years ago. It was a time to come together and gather as one, even if in several places, as we did simultaneously in Lockerbie and at Syracuse University, where 35 students were lost on that fateful day, along with those of us gathered at Arlington. It was a time to remember our loved ones, locked in time twenty years back and wonder what lives they might have lead if allowed to. It was a time to remember what we did, as a group of ordinary citizens, to change the way this country and the world looks at terrorism. We passed laws to make the skies safer, to allow victims of terrorist actions to bring legal actions against the country which sponsors such actions, we pressed the US and British governments to find the evidence to convict those responsible, and then had to press the United Nations to bring the most severe sanctions in it’s history against Libya, for their responsibility until they turned over those indicted. It turns out we have fought these fights for twenty years, and sadly we are not done, now enduring yet another appeal on behalf of Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, the only Libyan Secret Service Agent convicted under Scottish law. At one point we were told our group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 (www.victimsofpanamflight103.org) was second in power only to the NRA. There was a component to the weekend of coming together to remember all of our work and exchange stories of how we did what we did, and where we all our today. I am no longer actively involved with the group, having left the board and stepping down as President in the mid 90’s. But many have carried on since then and will continue in the future.

There is no way to tell the story of what we have been through. And yet, a friend of mine, a fellow photographer, now based in Washington and covering the Capital and White House among other things, has captured images from that afternoon at Arlington. They convey the emotions and feelings of that cold afternoon. Ken Cedeno (www.kencedeno.com) worked for me in Chicago at the time of the disaster. He called to say he was bringing a gift over to us when my wife told him it might not be the best time. Over the following year he saw first hand what one goes through after a disaster like this. He volunteered to cover the anniversary event on his own. As I have said, he did a magnificent job. There is a reason he is one of the finest editorial photographer’s working today. I think you can see in his imagery the power of the day, the emotions, the capturing of the moment. Having been there I can also hear the words spoken, the bag pipes and taps being played by the military trumpeter. To me this is editorial photography at its finest. All I can say is a big thank you to Ken for covering the event. You have given us all a wonderful way to remember the spirit of the day.

Peace,

Richard Mack

To see a more extensive collection of the images from Arlington use this link:

http://kencedeno.com/PanAm103/index.html All images on this post are copyrighted by Ken Cedeno.

November 28, 2008November 28, 2008

The Best Gifts for the Holiday’s!

Let’s face it – there are always a lot of choices one can make when shopping for gifts over the holidays, so why then do we always ask ourselves, “Now what can I possibly get for…”

Well look no further as this year you can give the BEST GIFT OF CHRISTMAS (or any other Holiday you may be celebrating!) The Lewis & Clark Trail American Landscapes! Many of folks who have bought the book as a gift before come back and buy more just because it was such a great gift the first time. So get one for the traveler, photographer, historian, nature lover or Lewis & Clark buff on your list this year. We’ve been told by many folks, once this book hits their coffee table, it stays right there. What could be a better endorsement! Or for the ultimate gift give the Limited Edition of the book, which comes in a Leather Slipcase and includes Three Fine Art Prints.

And of course if you don’t want to give a book, look at our Note Cards, Posters or Fine Art Prints. Or for the photographer on your list how about a spot in one of our Nature Photography Workshops?

Why fight the crowds at the mall for yet another tie or pair of socks…Check out the better options at Quiet Light Publishing!

November 19, 2008

ORPHANS WORKS BILL MUST BE DEFEATED!

Once again, and in that spirit I talked about last time of getting political, there is no better time nor cause for photographers or publisher’s to make their voices heard over than the Orphans Works bill in the House and Senate. Very powerful lobbying groups have pushed this cause to the detriment of individual artists, be they photographers, painters, illustrators, writers, poets, film or video producers or musicians.

YOUR WORK IS ON THE LINE!

Your copyright will not stand much ground if this bill is passed by the Congress. They have come back into a lame-duck session and while they say they won’t bring this up again there is also talk of killing the entire Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, where this issue currently is in debate. Then it would be taken up again by the full Judiciary Committee, where it was hatched many months ago.

Why do we need to abolish this bill? Because, it will take away your copyright protections without any due process. If some says they tried to find out who the artist was, they will be protected. How can we prove that?!? We will also be required to not just register our images with the copyright office, but also pay to have them listed with some new company – and this will be fee based depending on the number of images in the case of photographers.

To see the news release from the Advertising Photographers of America (APA) and the Illustrators Partnership use this link: OrphanWork.

Then write your congress person and Senators. But do it NOW! It will only take a few minutes and you can follow the links on the APA & Illustrator partnership pages to get it done in minutes – they even have the letters written for you – which you can customize to your liking.

Do it now, before you loose your rights.