Printing the Image - Day in Madeira

I tend to try and think up of some witty title for my blog posts, though I confess they’re probably only catchy to me.  There’s definitely a reason I’m not an ad-man.  Anyway, I was going to call this one Printing the Image - Lumix Love because I’ve returned again to images made with my point-and-shoot (again, a term that does not do justice to the images it produces) LUMIX LX100II.  Instead of being witty, I decided to go with fact that all the images I’d decided to work on and print were taken on the same day during our Madeira trip.  

Much like I mentioned in the post about Ann’s prints, some of the reason for the images I selected were to see how they would turn out in print as opposed to on-screen.  Often there is a big difference and, to be honest, we really haven’t printed enough to be able to tell when an image will flop as a print or, more importantly, take on new life as a print.  So we experiment to learn.

I selected the first print to check out two things.  First was to see if the glow on the second set of hills would show in the print.  It does.  The second was to see how the blue in the hole in the clouds would come out.  That was a pleasant surprise because not only was that blue plainly evident in the print at the hole in the clouds, the blue coloration cuts all across the sky in that portion of the image.  From the coloration you can tell that it’s a totally different cloud bank.  It’s edge has a lovely blue tone that off-sets the warm morning light in the rest of the image.  We’re slowly learning that subtle colorations are much more apparent in a print than they often are on a monitor.  And it’s often only after seeing it in a print do I realize it’s even there on the monitor (I can now see it is).

What I hadn’t expected was how lovely the deep black foreground hill would come out.  Often large areas in silhouette appear as a flat and formless black.  Not this time.  There is a real substance to the hill that has a presence on the print I’d never imagined.  What a good lesson to learn.

The second print was an image that I’d gone back and forth on whether I should develop it in color or in black and white.  When I did the Madeira blog posts, I used a color version.  There is a nice cool color to the gray stone.  This time I developed it in black and white.  The print is nothing short of lovely.  Shades of neutral gray and subtle tonal transitions that give character to each of the  stone forms, with sharp edges providing a real depth to the image.  It really makes me think that if done properly with the right images, prints from digital images can come close to the best of silver prints.  They can certainly match any silver print that isn’t spot on.

The third print was one that I was very excited about when I made it.  When I began to develop it, I decided I wanted to make sure the print had a sense of space and depth to it.  It took a bit of work to adjust the initial image on my monitor, set for viewing on a monitor, to having it appear “right” with the paper ICC profile.  But after a bit of experimenting, the has that sense of depth leading to the doorway.  I’m not sure it’s quite right, because that light crack at the edge of the door (looking onto the wall behind) doesn’t show up as well on the print like the crack by the window, but everything else is really close.  Plus, the print really conveys the mood of what I was trying to capture in the photograph.  I can’t say I am disappointed by the results.

The last photograph was, in a word, tough.  By that I mean the paper’s ICC profile played havoc on the red paint off to the left.  Usually, the ICC profile for the paper - Red River Paolo Duro Soft Gloss Rag - barely requires any adjustments to an image (sometimes just a bit of contrast adjustment or a small lifting of the whites).  Not this time.  The deep red turned into a bright red.  It wasn’t a bad color, but it wasn’t what was there and, even worse, it looked horrible against the sea blue on the rest of the door, which the ICC profile accurately rendered.  

Developing this image threw me into a part of the pool I rarely swim in - color theory.  After 3 or 4 failed attempts to “correct” the reds, I finally found the proper adjustments to the hue-saturation-tone sliders that brought the red to where it was supposed to be and how I wanted it.  I probably spent as much time working on this image as any two of the above images.  Thank goodness the ICC profile on the monitor did its job and the printer accurately reproduced the adjustments I’d made.

In the end, the deep reds turned out the way they were supposed to.  But I couldn’t believe that such a simple image would require that much work to get right.  Of course everything else, from the rusty nail to the peeling paint to the golden exposed doorframe turned out as it should have and the print is a playground of textures and colors for the eye.  

Just as with Ann’s printing session, mine was a success! 

By the time you read this, Ann and I should be in Munich getting ready to do the bimobil checkout.  Not that we’ll be driving it home, but it will be the last step to it officially being ours.  With any luck, we’ll have a day to run around Munich (we have shopping plans) and will have a couple (or more) blog posts from the trip!