Bill Pierce
Well-known
Well, it took some time, but we have power and the internet back.
I’ve been spending a lot of pandemic home time doing my equivalent of printing albums. My equivalent is small archival portfolio boxes holding 8 1/2 x 11 inch prints with big borders that make them easy to handle, usually around a 6 x9 image for the common 2x3 format. While they may have a common subject, these prints are often a hodge-podge of film and digital, black-and-whte and color. Just to have a uniform presentation, I’ll often make boxes that are all color or all black-and-white. Mixing color prints from digital files and scans of color negatives and slides will produce an acceptably uniform result. Not so with the black-and-white, scans of film negatives from a variety of scanners and digital files converted to black-and-white. Unless I am very careful, there is a different look to the inkjet prints from scanned film and digital files. Having grown up with film and having gotten pretty good at making my inkjet prints look like silver prints, I’m pretty happy with the results from scanned film and can get what I want in a fairly quick and efficient way. Digital, not so much…. I start by setting up an image with the total range of tones visible and then with the controls of Lightroom or Photoshop (and occasionally Capture One) move sliders and tweak curves until it satisfies me that first the screen image and then a small proof print “look like film.” To say this is inefficient is an understatement - an extreme understatement.
And so I turn to the wise members of the Rangefinder Forum. How do you make black-and-white inkjet prints from digital files look like silver prints from film? Clearly, if anybody knows how they will get the Rangefinder Forum Smartest Person of the Week award.
I’ve been spending a lot of pandemic home time doing my equivalent of printing albums. My equivalent is small archival portfolio boxes holding 8 1/2 x 11 inch prints with big borders that make them easy to handle, usually around a 6 x9 image for the common 2x3 format. While they may have a common subject, these prints are often a hodge-podge of film and digital, black-and-whte and color. Just to have a uniform presentation, I’ll often make boxes that are all color or all black-and-white. Mixing color prints from digital files and scans of color negatives and slides will produce an acceptably uniform result. Not so with the black-and-white, scans of film negatives from a variety of scanners and digital files converted to black-and-white. Unless I am very careful, there is a different look to the inkjet prints from scanned film and digital files. Having grown up with film and having gotten pretty good at making my inkjet prints look like silver prints, I’m pretty happy with the results from scanned film and can get what I want in a fairly quick and efficient way. Digital, not so much…. I start by setting up an image with the total range of tones visible and then with the controls of Lightroom or Photoshop (and occasionally Capture One) move sliders and tweak curves until it satisfies me that first the screen image and then a small proof print “look like film.” To say this is inefficient is an understatement - an extreme understatement.
And so I turn to the wise members of the Rangefinder Forum. How do you make black-and-white inkjet prints from digital files look like silver prints from film? Clearly, if anybody knows how they will get the Rangefinder Forum Smartest Person of the Week award.
