Brilliant Supreme Lustre Paper Review
(26/07/2015: Important update added at end of post re: Canon Pixma Pro 1 .icc profile from the Brilliant website).
Printing an image is the final part of the creative process, and I don’t think there are many of my peers who would disagree with me on that score.
Whenever I’m teaching printing, be it a 1to1 session or a workshop group, I invariably get asked what my recommendation for a good general purpose printing paper would be – one that would suit the widest spread of image styles and subjects.
Until quite recently that recommendation was always the same – Permajet Oyster.
It’s a wide gamut paper – it reproduces a lot of colour and hue variation – that has a high level of brightness and is really easy to soft-proof to in Lightroom. And even though it’s not absolutely colour neutral, it’s natural base tint isn’t too cool to destroy the atmosphere in a hazy orange sunset seascape.
But, after months of printing and testing I have now changed my mind – and for good reason.
Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate paper from Calumet is my new recommendation for general printing, and for anyone who wants printing with the minimum of fuss and without the hassle of trying to decide what paper to choose.
Let’s look at how the two papers stack up:
Paper Weight:
Permajet Oyster 271gsm
Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate 300gsm
A heavier paper is a good thing in my book; heavier means thicker, and that means a bit more structural stability; a boon when it comes to matting and mounting, and general paper handling.
Paper Tint & Base Neutrality:
Permajet Oyster: RGB 241,246,243
Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate: RGB 241,245,245
The above RGB values are measured using a ColorMunki Photo in spot colour picker mode, as are the L,a,b values below.
L,a,b Luminosity Value:
Permajet Oyster: 96.1
Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate: 95.8
So both papers have the same red value in their ‘paper white’, but both have elevated green and blue values, and yes, green + blue = cyan!
But the green/blue ratios are different – they are skewed in the Permajet Oyster, but 1:1 in the Brilliant paper – so where does this leave us in terms of paper proofing?
The image below is a fully processed TIFF open in Lightroom and ready for soft-proofing:
Now if we load the image into the Permajet Oyster colour space – that’s all soft proofing is by the way – we can see a number of changes, all to the detriment of the image:
The image has lost luminance, the image has become slightly cooler overall but, there is a big colour ‘skew’ in the brown, reds and oranges of both the eagle and the muted background colours.
Now look at what happens when we send the image into the Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate colour space:
Yes the image has lost luminance, and there is an overall colour temperature change; but the important thing is that it’s nowhere near as skewed as it was in the Permajet Oyster soft-proofing environment.
The more uniform the the colour change the easier it is to remove!
The only adjustments I’ve needed to make to put me in the middle of the right ball park are a +6 Temp and +2 Clarity – and we are pretty much there, ready to press the big “print me now” button.
The image below just serves to show the difference between the proof adjusted and unadjusted image:
But here is the same image soft-proofed to pretty much the same level, but for Permajet Oyster paper – click the image to see it at full size, just look at the number of adjustments I’ve had to do to get basically the same effect:
Couple of things – firstly, apologies for the somewhat violent image – the wife just pointed that out to me! Secondly though, after testing various images of vastly differing colour distributions and gamuts, I consistently find I’m having to do less work in soft-proofing with the Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate paper than its rival. Though I must stress that the adjustments don’t always follow the same direction for obvious reasons..
Media Settings:
These are important. For most printers the Oyster paper has a media setting recommendation on Epson printers ( someone once told me there were other makes that used bubbles – ewee, yuck) of Premium Gloss Photo Paper or PGPP. But I find that PSPP (Premium Semi Gloss Photo Paper) works best on my 4800, and I know that it’s the recommended media setting for the Epson SCP600.
See update below for Canon Pixma Pro 1 media settings and new updated .icc profile
Conclusion:
Buy a 25 sheet box A3 HERE or 50 sheet box A4 size HERE
They say time is money, so anything that saves time is a no-brainer, especially if it costs no more than its somewhat more labour-intensive alternative.
The gamut or colour spaces of the two paper ‘canned profiles’ is shown above – red plot is the Brilliant Supreme Lustre Ultimate and white is Oyster – both profiles being for the Epson 4800. Yes, the Calumet paper gamut is slightly smaller, but in real terms and with real-world images and the relative colour-metric rendering intent I’ve not noticed any short-comings whatsoever.
I have little doubt that the gamut of the paper would be expanded further with the application of a custom profile, but that’s a whole other story.
Running at around £1 per sheet of A3 it’s no more expensive than any other top quality general printing paper, and it impresses the heck out of me with relatively neutral base tint.
So easy to print to – so buy some!
I’ll be demonstrating just how well this paper works at a series of Print Workshops for Calumet later in the year, where we’ll be using the Epson SC-P600 printer, which is the replacement for the venerable R3000.
UPDATE:
Canon Pixma Pro One .ICC Profile
If anyone has tried using the Lustre profile BriLustreCanPro1.icc that was available for download on the Brilliant website, then please STOP trying to use it – it’s an abomination and whoever produced it should be shot.
I discovered just how bad it was when I was doing a print 1to1 day and the client had a PixmaPro1 printer. I spoke to Andy Johnson at Calumet and within a couple of days a new profile was sorted out and it works great.
Now that same new profile is available for download at the Brilliant website HERE – just click and download the zip file. In the file you will find the new .icc profile which goes by the name of BriLustreCanonPro1_PPPL_1.icc
I got them to add the media settings acronym in the profile name – a la Permajet – so set the paper type to Photo Paper Pro Lustre when using this paper on the Pixma Pro 1.
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Lightroom CC 2015 Crash Fix.
***Attention – if you are looking for help with the problems associated with Lightroom CC 2015/Lightroom 6 version 2.0 – October 2015 – then please go to this latest post page HERE and scroll down the page for the Temporary FIX. This Lightrom crash fix/rollback method applies to both Mac & PC users***
Lightroom CC 2015 Crash & Performance Issues – (first release).
There are a great many folk out there experiencing crash or freeze problems with the new Lightroom CC 2015.
The biggest problem, and the one that has effected me, is random crashing in the Develop Module, and a ‘jittery’ crop rotation tool.
If you have suffered from this then you will most likely have an ‘not too new’ nVidea GPU – or so it would appear.
Lightroom CC 2015 makes use of the graphics GPU acceleration on your computer, and this is ‘turned ON’ by default upon installation of the application.
But it seems that older nVidea chipsets are causing some quite considerable speed reduction problems, to the point where the application can run out of ram and basically crash.
Adobe are supposed to be creating a fix (according to the forums) but you can get around the problem really easily.
Open up Lightroom CC 2015 and go to your Lightroom preferences:
On the preferences panel you’ll see a new tab called ‘Performance’
You will see a checked ‘tick box’ for Use Graphics Processor – UNTICK IT, close the preferences panel and restart Lightroom CC 2015.
I’m on a mid-2009 Mac Pro running 10.10.3 Yosemite and a bog standard (for the day) nVidea Geforce GT120 512Mb graphics card.
Lightroom CC 2015 was slower than Lr5 on this machine, it would crash, the crop tool occasionally looked like it was a ‘motor neurone’ sufferer, and the heal/clone tool was harsh, pixelated and quite slow.
Turning OFF GPU acceleration has seemingly cured all my woes, and now it runs as smoothly as Lightroom 5 did but with the Photomerge options and other benefits of Lightroom CC 2015.
On that same performance tab there is a ‘system info’ button you can press that’ll give you the specifications of your machine and Lightroom installation:
The word ‘Passed’ next to the Open GL support means nothing, and if you you click the ‘Learn More’ link on the performance tab of Lightroom preferences it’ll take you to THIS PAGE on the Adobe support website.
On that page you will see this:
Now this explains A LOT!
Running a standard (sub 2K) 24″ monitor with sub 1Gb of VRAM, even with updated driver support for Open GL 3.3, means you are running at a resolution of 1920 pixels long edge and in effect you will not really benefit from Lightroom CC 2015 GPU acceleration in the first place.
I’m also running Lightroom CC 2015 on a mid 2011 27″ non-retina iMac with a horizontal resolution of 2560 pixels and an ATI Radion HD 6770M 512Mb graphics chipset. This machine hasn’t crashed as such, but is certainly better run with the GPU acceleration turned OFF too.
Here is a very rough test you can do:
- Open a FULL RESOLUTION image in the Develop module.
- Pick up the Heal/Clone tool and set it to Heal with the opacity & feather controls to 100%
- Paint a random stroke on the image, and while painting, look carefully at the white edges of the stroke – are they smooth and feathered, or harsh and slightly granular?
- If they are the latter the go and turn OFF GPU acceleration and repeat the process – you will see the edges of the stroke look much better.
Click to view LARGER
So, think of it this way; Adobe have put a facility into Lightroom 6/CC 2015 that makes use of very latest up to date computer graphics systems AND it’s ‘active’ by default.
If you run a new iMac 27″ Retina then you are running 5120 pixels on the long edge – that’s 5K graphics, and the new GPU acceleration will help you.
If your system fails to meet the operating criteria then having the acceleration active will cause you problems. The severity of the problems you experience will be proportional to how ‘out of date’ your graphics are; so TURN IT OFF !
I can’t speak about installations of Lightroom CC 2015 under the Windows operating systems, but looking at the forums it seems that the same sort of problems exist for PC users.
A friend called this morning saying that the default installation ran smoothly and at warp-speed on his new retina macbook, but was noticeably slower than Lightroom 5 on his desktop PC – same problem, same fix.
Crash and slow-down problems with Lightroom CC 2015 are not OS problems – they are GPU VRAM/RAM problems, so don’t waste your time defraging hard drives and running system ‘junk checks’ if Lightroom 5 ran well.
Lightroom CC 2015 Launch Hang Problem?
If you are experiencing launch hang, splash screen hang or crashing of the application on launch then GO HERE where you’ll see the instructions in the image above.
Kyle Bailey kindly sent me a solution/fix for a windows crash fix if you literally can’t uncheck the graphics acceleration check box:
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Andrew, but I couldn’t untick the graphics processor box –Lightroom would crash when I tried. I just spent a couple hours with tech support and thought I’d share our solution:
Close LR first. Open device manager, double click on display adapters, right-click your graphics card (mine was AMD Radeon), choose install drivers, browse system, pick from list. Make NOTE of which is currently active, then change it to standard VGA. It may prompt you to reboot, but don’t do it.
This will make the screen look crazy, but don’t worry! Now, open LR, untick the graphics box, and close LR.
Finally, go back into device manager and change it back to the original driver and viola. Next time you start LR, the box will remain unticked.
Cheers for that Kyle.
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HDR in Lightroom CC (2015)
Lightroom CC (2015) – exciting stuff!
New direct HDR MERGE for bracketed exposure sequences inside the Develop Module of Lightroom CC 2015 – nice one Adobe! I can see Eric Chan’s finger-prints all over this one…!
Twilight at Porth Y Post, Anglesey.
After a less than exciting 90 minutes on the phone with Adobe this vary morning – that’s about 10 minutes of actual conversation and an eternity of crappy ‘Muzak’ – I’ve managed to switch from my expensive old single app PsCC subscription to the Photography Plan – yay!
They wouldn’t let me upgrade my old stand-alone Lr4/Lr5 to Lr6 ‘on the cheap’ so now they’ve given me two apps for half the price I was paying for 1 – mental people, but I’ll not be arguing!
I was really eager to try out the new internal ‘Merge’ script/command for HDR sequences – and boy am I impressed.
I picked a twilight seascape scene I shot last year:
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
I’ve taken a 6 shot exposure bracketed sequence of RAW files above, into the Develop Module of Lightroom CC and done 3 simple adjustments to all 6 under Auto Synch:
- Change camera profile from Adobe Standard to Camera Neutral.
- ‘Tick’ Remove Chromatic Aberration in the Lens Corrections panel.
- Change the colour temperature from ‘as shot’ to a whopping 13,400K – this neutralises the huge ‘twilight’ blue cast.
You have to remember that NOT ALL adjustments you can make in the Develop Module will carry over in this process, but these 3 will.
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
Ever since Lr4 came out we have had the ability to take a bracketed sequence in Lightroom and send them to Photoshop to produce what’s called a ’32 bit floating point TIFF’ file – HDR without any of the stupid ‘grunge effects’ so commonly associated with the more normal styles of HDR workflow.
The resulting TIFF file would then be brought back into Lightroom where some very fancy processing limits were given to us – namely the exposure latitude above all else.
‘Normal’ range images, be they RAW or TIFF etc, have a potential 10 stops of exposure adjustment, +5 to -5 stops, both in the Basics Panel, and with Linear and Radial graduated filters.
But 32 bit float TIFFs had a massive 20 stops of adjustment, +10 to -10 stops – making for some very fancy and highly flexible processing.
Now the, what’s a ‘better’ file type than pixel-based TIFF? A RAW file……
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
So, after selecting the six RAW images, right-clicking and selecting ‘Photomerge>HDR’…
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
…and selecting ‘NONE’ from the ‘de-ghost’ options, I was amazed to find the resulting ‘merged file’ was a DNG – not a TIFF – yet it still carries the 20 stop exposure adjustment latitude.
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
This is the best news for ages, and grunge-free, ‘real-looking’ HDR workflow time has just been axed by at least 50%. I can’t really say any more about it really, except that, IMHO of course, this is the best thing to happen for Adobe RAW workflow since the advent of PV2012 itself – BRILLIANT!
Note: Because all the shots in this sequence featured ‘blurred water’, applying any de-ghosting would be detrimental to the image, causing some some weird artefacts where water met static rocks etc.
But if you have image sequences that have moving objects in them you can select from 3 de-ghost pre-sets to try and combat the artefacts caused by them, and you can check the de-ghost overlay tick-box to pre-visualise the de-ghosting areas in the final image.
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
Switch up to Lightroom CC 2015 – it’s worth it for this facility alone.
Click to view LARGER IMAGE.
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Lumenzia – Not Just for Landscapes
Luminosity Masking is NOT just for landscape photographs – far from it.
But most folk miss the point of luminosity masking because they think it’s difficult and tedious.
The point, as I always see it, is that luminosity masking allows you to make dramatic but subtle changes and enhancements to your image with what are actually VERY fast and crude “adjustments”.
This in reality means that luminosity masking is FAST – and way faster than trying to do “localised” adjustments. But the creation of the masks and choosing which one to use is what crippled the “ease factor” for most.
But with this new Lumenzia extension is so snappy and quick at showing you the different masks that, if you know what area of the image you want to adjust, the whole process takes SECONDS.
Let’s look at a White-tailed Eagle taken just 15 days ago:
Straight off the 1Dx it looks like this:
RAW unprocessed .CR2 file (CLICK to view in new window)
Inside the Develop Module of Lightroom 5 it looks like:
RAW unprocessed – (CLICK to view in new window)
A few tweaks later and it looks like:
Tweaks are what you can see in the Basics Panel + CamCal set to Neutral, and Chroma Noise removal in the Lens Corrections Panel is turned ON – (CLICK to view in new window)
Sending THIS adjusted image to Photoshop:
(CLICK to view in new window)
All I want to do is give a “lift” to the darker tones in the bird; under the wings, and around the side of head, legs and tail.
Using a BRUSH to do the job is all fine ‘n dandy BUT, you would be creating a localised adjustment that’s all-encompassing from a tonal perspective; all tones that fell under the brush get adjusted by the same amount.
A luminosity mask, or indeed ANY pixel-based mask is exactly what it says it is – a mask full of pixels. And those pixels are DERIVED from the real pixels in your image. But the real beauty is that those pixels will be anywhere from 1% to 100% selected, or not selected at all.
Where they are 100% selected they are BLACK, and any adjustment you make BEHIND that mask will NOT be visible.
Pixels that are NOT selected will be WHITE, and your adjustment will show fully.
But where the pixels are between 1% and 99% selected they will appear as 1% GREY to 99% grey and so will show or hide variation of said adjustment by the same amounts…got it?
The Lumenzia D4 mask looks like it’ll do the job I want:
Lumenzia D4 mask (CLICK to view in new window)
Click the image to view larger – look at the subtle selections under those wings – try making that selection any other way in under 2 seconds – you’ve got no chance!
The “lift” I want to make in those WHITER areas of the mask is best done with a Curves Adjustment layer:
Select “Curve” in the Lumenzia GUI – (CLICK to view in new window)
So hit the Curve button and voilà:
The Lumenzia D4 mask is now applied to Curves Adjustment Layer – (CLICK to view in new window)
You can see in the image above that I’ve made a very rough upwards deflection of the curve to obtain an effective but subtle improvement to those under-wing areas etc. that I was looking to adjust.
The total time frame from opening the image in Photoshop to now is about 20 seconds! Less time than the Lightroom 5 adjustments took…
And to illustrate the power of that Lumenzia D4 Luminosity mask, and the crudity of the adjustment I made, here’s the image WITHOUT THE MASK:
The effect of the luminosity mask is best illustrated by “hiding” it – bloody hell, turn it back on ! – (CLICK to view in new window).
And at full resolution you can see the subtleties of the adjustment on the side of the head:
With Lumenzia (left) and just the Lightroom 5 processing (right) – (CLICK to view in new window).
If you want to get the best from your images AND you don’t want to spend hours trying to do so, then Lumenzia will seriously help you.
Clicking this link HERE to buy Lumenzia doesn’t mean it costs you any more than if you buy it direct from the developer. But it does mean that I get a small remuneration from the developer as a commission which in turn supports my blog. Buying Lumenzia is a total no-brainer so please help support this blog by buying it via these links – many thanks folks.
UPDATE June 2018: Greg Benz (the plugin author) has launched a comprehensive Lumenzia training course – see my post here for more information.
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View Autofocus Points in Lightroom
Mr. Malcolm Clayton sent me a link last week to a free plug-in for Lightroom that displays the autofocus points used for the shot, plus other very useful information such as focus distance, f-number and shutter speed, depth of field (DoF) values and other bits and bobs.
The plug-in is called “Show Focus Points” and you can download it HERE
Follow the installation instruction to the letter!
Once installed you can only launch it from the LIBRARY MODULE:
Accessing the Plug-in via the Library>Plug-in Extras menu CLICK to view LARGER
You will see this sort of thing:
The “Show Focus Points” for Lightroom plug-in window. CLICK to view LARGER.
It’s a usefull tool to have because short of running the rather clunky Canon DPP or Nikon ViewNX software it’s the easiest way of getting hold of autofocus information without sending the image to Photoshop and looking through the mind-numbing RAW schema data – something I do out of habbit!
It displays a ton of useful data about your camera focus settings and exposure, and the autofocus point used – be it set by you, or chosen by the camera.
As far as I can see, the plug-in only displays the main active autofocus point on Nikon D4 and D4S files, but all the autofocus group as well as active points seem to display when viewing .CR2 Canon files as we can see on this very impressive car number plate!:
Screen grab of an unprocessed 1Dx/200-400/TC shot I did while testing the tracking capabilities of the Canon lens with the TC active – the REAL image looks more impressive than this! I’m actually zooming out while tracking too – this is around 200mm + the 1.4x TC. CLICK to view LARGER
Canon 1Dx in AI Servo AF Point Expansion 4 point; what I call “1 with 4 friends”. CLICK to view LARGER.
Canon 1Dx in AI-F autofocus showing all autofocus points used be the camera.
Viewing your autofocus points is a very valid learning tool when trying to become familiar with your cameras autofocus, and it’s also handy if you want to see why and where you’ve “screwed the pooch” – hey, we ALL DO IT from time to time!
Useful tool to have IMO and it’s FREE – Andy likes free…
Cheers to Malc Clayton for bringing this to my attention.
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Camera Calibration
Custom Camera Calibration
The other day I had an email fall into my inbox from leading UK online retailer…whose name escapes me but is very short… that made my blood pressure spike. It was basically offering me 20% off the cost of something that will revolutionise my photography – ColorChecker Passport Camera Calibration Profiling software.
I got annoyed for two reasons:
- Who the “f***” do they think they’re talking to sending ME this – I’ve forgotten more about this colour management malarkey than they’ll ever know….do some customer research you idle bastards and save yourselves a mauling!
- Much more importantly – tens of thousands of you guys ‘n gals will get the same email and some will believe the crap and buy it – and you will get yourselves into the biggest world of hurt imaginable!
Don’t misunderstand me, a ColorChecker Passport makes for a very sound purchase indeed and I would not like life very much if I didn’t own one. What made me seethe is the way it’s being marketed, and to whom.
Profile all your cameras for accurate colour reproduction…..blah,blah,blah……..
If you do NOT fully understand the implications of custom camera calibration you’ll be in so much trouble when it comes to processing you’ll feel like giving up the art of photography.
The problems lie in a few areas:
First, a camera profile is a SENSOR/ASIC OUTPUT profile – think about that a minute.
Two things influence sensor/asic output – ISO and lens colour shift – yep. that’s right, no lens is colour-neutral, and all lenses produce colour shifts either by tint or spectral absorption. And higher ISO settings usually produce a cooler, bluer image.
Let’s take a look at ISO and its influence on custom camera calibration profiling – I’m using a far better bit of software for doing the job – “IN MY OPINION” – the Adobe DNG Profile Editor – free to all MAC download and Windows download – but you do need the ColorChecker Passport itself!
I prefer the Adobe product because I find the ColorChecker software produced camera calibration profiles there were, well, pretty vile in terms of increased contrast especially; not my cup of tea at all.
5 images shot at 1 stop increments of ISO on the same camera/lens combination.
Now this is NOT a demo of software – a video tutorial of camera profiling will be on my next photography training video coming sometime soon-ish, doubtless with a somewhat verbose narrative explaining why you should or should not do it!
Above, we have 5 images shot on a D4 with a 24-70 f2.8 at 70mm under a consistent overcast daylight at 1stop increments of ISO between 200 and 3200.
Below, we can see the resultant profile and distribution of known colour reference points on the colour wheel.
Here’s the 200 ISO custom camera calibration profile – the portion of interest to us is the colour wheel on the left and the points of known colour distribution (the black squares and circled dot).
Next, we see the result of the image shot at 3200 ISO:
Here’s the result of the custom camera profile based on the shot taken at 3200 ISO.
Now let’s super-impose one over t’other – if ISO doesn’t matter to a camera calibration profile then we should see NO DIFFERENCE………….
The 3200 ISO profile colour distribution overlaid onto the 200 ISO profile colour distribution – it’s different and they do not match up.
……..well would you bloody believe it! Embark on custom camera calibration profiling your camera and then apply that profile to an image shot with the same lens under the same lighting conditions but at a different ISO, and your colours will not be right.
So now my assertions about ISO have been vindicated, let’s take a look at skinning the cat another way, by keeping ISO the same but switching lenses.
Below is the result of a 500mm f4 at 1000 ISO:
Profile result of a 500mm f4 at 1000 ISO
And below we have the 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm and 1000 ISO:
Profile result of a 24-70mm f2.8 @ 70mm at 1000 ISO
Let’s overlay those two and see if there’s any difference:
Profile results of a 500mm f4 at 1000 ISO and the 24-70 f2.8 at 1000 ISO – as massively different as day and night.
Whoops….it’s all turned to crap!
Just take a moment to look at the info here. There is movement in the orange/red/red magentas, but even bigger movements in the yellows/greens and the blues and blue/magentas.
Because these comparisons are done simply in Photoshop layers with the top layer at 50% opacity you can even see there’s an overall difference in the Hue and Saturation slider values for the two profiles – the 500mm profile is 2 and -10 respectively and the 24-70mm is actually 1 and -9.
The basic upshot of this information is that the two lenses apply a different colour cast to your image AND that cast is not always uniformly applied to all areas of the colour spectrum.
And if you really want to “screw the pooch” then here’s the above comparison side by side with with the 500f4 1000iso against the 24-70mm f2.8 200iso view:
500mm f4/24-70mm f2.8 1000 ISO comparison versus 500mm f4 1000 ISO and 24-70mm f2.8 200 ISO.
A totally different spectral distribution of colour reference points again.
And I’m not even going to bother showing you that the same camera/lens/ISO combo will give different results under different lighting conditions – you should by now be able to envisage that little nugget yourselves.
So, Custom Camera Calibration – if you do it right then you’ll be profiling every body/lens combo you have, at every conceivable ISO value and lighting condition – it’s one of those things that if you don’t do it all then you’d be best off not doing at all in most cases.
I can think of a few instances where I would do it as a matter of course, such as scientific work, photo-microscopy, and artwork photography/copystand work etc, but these would be well outside the remit the more normal photographic practices.
As I said earlier, the Passport device itself is worth far more than it’s weight in gold – set up and light your shot and include the Passport device in a prominent place. Take a second shot without it and use shot 1 to custom white balance shot 2 – a dead easy process that makes the device invaluable for portrait and studio work etc.
But I hope by now you can begin to see the futility of trying to use a custom camera calibration profile on a “one size fits all” basis – it just won’t work correctly; and yet for the most part this is how it’s marketed – especially by third party retailers.
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Parallel Horizontals.
Quite often when shooting landscapes, or more commonly seascapes, you may run into a problem with parallel horizontals and distortion between far and near horizontal features such as in the image below.
Parallel horizontals that are not parallel – but should be!
This sort of error cannot be fully corrected in Lightroom alone; we have to send the image to Photoshop in order to make the corrections in the most efficient manner.
Here’s a video lesson on how to effectively do just that, using the simplest, easiest and quickest of methods:
You can watch the video at full size HERE – make sure you click the HD icon.
This is something which commonly happens when photographing water with a regular shaped man-made structure in the foreground and a foreshortened horizon line such as the receding opposite shore in this shot. But with a little logical thought these problems with parallel horizontals being “out of kilter” can be easily cured.
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Black Ink Type
Black ink type and black ink switching when moving from matte to luster and gloss papers – here’s my thoughts on this, initially triggered by Franks’ reply to my previous article HERE.
And I quote:
Another great and instructive article Andy. I have the r3000 but get slightly annoyed with the black ink changes from one to the other. Some further guidance on the use of these re paper ‘types’ would be appreciated by moi ~ please ♡
Look, he’s even put a heart in there – bless you Frank, that’s more than I’ve got out of ‘her indoors’ for years!
Now the basic school of thought over this switching of black ink type is this:
- PK, or Photo Black ink type supposedly produces a smooth, highly glossy black.
- MK or Matte Black ink type produces a dull, flat black.
- Using a matte finish paper requires the MATTE black ink type.
- Using Luster or Gloss paper requires the Photo black ink type.
The PK black ink type really only produces a HIGH GLOSS finish when chucked onto HIGH GLOSS media. Its’ got a rather less glossy and more ‘egg shell’ finish when used on a more luster finish paper. There does come a “tipping point” though where it will look a little shinier than the finish of the paper – and it’s this tipping point where theory, clever-dicks and user-guides tell you there’s a need to switch to the matte black ink type.
The Matte black ink type does exactly what point two says it does.
The third point – replace the word “requires” with the phrase “can cope with” and we’d be about right.
The forth point is absolutely true; get this wrong by printing with the MK black ink type on high gloss paper and you’ll just waste consumables and potentially end up with the type of clean up operation normally the preserve of Exon & BP. Dot gain on steroids!
There’s also an argument that the MK black ink type produces a deeper black on matte finish paper than the PK black ink type – this is also true:
Permajet canned profiles for Museum paper on the Epson 4800 printer using PK and MK black ink types.
As we can clearly see, the Matte black ink type does indeed accommodate a deeper black point than its counterpart Photo black ink type.
Adopting the Common Sense Approach
There are a few things we need to think about here, and the first one is my constant mantra that the choice of paper is governed by the “overall look, feel and atmosphere of the finished image” when it’s sitting there on your monitor.
Paper choice IS the final part of the creative process; for all the reasons I’ve mentioned in past blog posts.
You will also know by now that in my world there is little room for high gloss paper – it’s a total pain the bum because of its highly reflective surface; but that same surface can allow you to print the very finest of details.
But here’s common sense point number 1 – the majority of people reading this blog, attending my workshops and coming to me for 1to1 tuition CAN NOT produce images with detail fine enough to warrant this single benefit of high gloss paper.
That’s not because they’re daft or rubbish at processing either – it’s simply due to the fact that they shoot 35mm format dSLR, not £30K medium format. The sensors we commonly use can’t record enough ultra fine detail. There’s a really good comparison between the Nikon D800 and an IQ160 here, it’s well worth having a look – then you’ll see what I’m on about.
The point I’m trying to make is this; print on gloss from 35mm if you like; but you are saddling yourself with its problems but not truthfully getting any of the benefit – but you can kid yourself if you like!
I Lust After Luster Papers But How Lusty Is That Luster?
As I mentioned in the previous post, Calumet Brilliant Museum Satin Matte Natural is NOT a matte finish paper.
True matte papers never really hold much appeal for me if I’m honest, because they are very dull, flat and relatively lifeless. Yes, a 12×12 inch monochromatic image might look stunning, especially hanging in an area where reflections might prove difficult for any other print surface.
But that same image printed 8 foot square might well “kill’ any room you hang it in, just because it’s so dull and so damned BIG.
True matte papers do have their uses that’s for sure, but in the main you need to discriminate between matte and what I call matte “effect”.
Permajet Fine Art Museum 310, Matte Plus and Portrait 300 are papers that spring to mind as falling into this matte effect category – and wouldn’t you know it, there are canned profiles for these papers for both PK and MK black ink type ink sets, as you can see from the image earlier in the post.
So, with regard to black ink type switching you have to ask yourself:
- Am I using a paper the ACTUALLY NEEDS the MK black ink type? Chances are you’re probably not!
- If I am, do I really want to – how big a print am I doing?
In my own print portfolio I only have two images that benefit from being printed on a “dead” media surface, and they are both printed to Permajet Museum using the PK black ink type.
I had another one that looked “nearly there” but the heavy texture of the paper detracted from the image, so it was re-proofed and printed to Matt Plus, again using PK ink. It looked just the same from a colour/luminance stand point, but worse from a ‘style’ point because of the zero texture.
Along comes Calumet Museum Satin Matte Natural!
The subtle texture gets me where I wanted to be on that score, and that ever-so-soft luster just makes the colours come to life that tiny bit more, giving me a print variation that I love and hadn’t even envisaged at the time I did the original print.
Ink Type Switching
I have to say at the outset that I do NOT own an R3000 printer – I use wide format Epson printers and so have no commercial need for the 3000 DT format. But I always advise people looking for a printer to buy one – it’s a stunning machine that punches well above it’s weight based on price point.
My Epson wide format does not hold both black ink types. Switching entails a rather tedious and highly wasteful process; which I have neither desire or need to embark upon.
But if you have any brand of printer that carries both types on board then I’d highly recommend you to set the black ink type to PK, and turn any auto-switching OFF – that is, set switching to manual.
Right, now the super-pessimist in me shines through!
I’m not a fan of Epson papers on the whole, and there’s a lot more choice and far better quality available from third party suppliers ranging from Photospeed to Hahnemuhle, Canson, Red River and all points in between.
Now third party suppliers in the main will tell you to use one black ink type or the other – or either, and give you the correct media settings (Brilliant – are you reading this??).
But, if you have auto switching enabled, and use Epson paper, the print head sees the paper surface and automatically switches the ink to the ‘supposed’ correct type. This switching process requires the printer to purge the black ink line and refill it with the ‘correct’ black ink type before printing commences.
Now these figures are the stats quoted from Epson:
Black ink conversion times:
- Matte to Photo Black approx. 3 min. 30 sec
- Photo to Matte Black approx. 2 min. sec
Ink used during conversion:
- Matte to Photo Black approx. 3 ml
- Photo to Matte Black approx. 1 ml
Now why the times and volumes aren’t the same in both directions is a bit of a mystery to me and doesn’t make sense. But what is killer is that the carts are only 26 (25.9)ml and around £24 each, so 6 changes of black ink type is going to burn through as good as £25 of ink – and that’s without doing any bloody printing!!!
When ever I demo this printer at a workshop I never use Epson paper, auto switching is OFF and I never get a head sensor warning to tell me to switch ink even if I load Permajet Museum – the head sensor doesn’t warn me about the fact that I’m using PK ink.
Yes the printer could be up the spout, but using a canned PK profile the resulting print would tend to indicate otherwise.
Or something slightly more dark and sinister might be happening – or rather NOT, because I’m not using OEM paper………...What was that I heard you say? Good gracious me…you might think that but I couldn’t possibly comment!
One thing to bare in mind is this. For the most part, the majority of print media will work exceptionally well with the PK black ink type – BUT NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND – you’ve been warned. If you want to know how the captain of the Exon Valdez felt and be up to your ass in black stuff then go ahead and give it a try, but don’t send the cleaning bills to me!
I did it once years ago with an HP printer – I can still see matte black ink tide marks on the skirting board in my office……it wasn’t pretty! And it screwed the printer up totally.
Using PK on matte media will only effect the D-max and lower the overall contrast a wee bit; unless it’s a very low key image with vast areas of blackish tones in it then for the most part you’d perhaps struggle to notice it. Sometimes you might even find that the drop in contrast even works to your advantage.
But don’t forget, you might not be using a matte media at all, even though it visually looks like it and says the word matte in the paper name. If the paper manufacturer supplies a PK and an MK profile for the same paper then save yourself time and money and use the PK profile to soft-proof to AND to control the printer colour management.
Did that answer your question Frank – FRANK – can you hear me Frank??!!
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Brilliant Papers from Calumet
Brilliant Papers from Calumet
My thoughts on two papers from the Calumet Brilliant Papers range.
Brilliant Museum Printing Papers from Calumet
As I CONSTANTLY demonstrate to individuals and groups during workshops and 1to1 tuition days, printing is so damned easy it’s ridiculous. Provided you get all your “ducks in a row” – and that’s not the hardest thing in the world to do, considering you’ve only got 3 bloody ducks!
How hard can it be???
Notwithstanding the necessity for an accurate monitor profile (duck number 1), the paper and its profile, or colour space if you like, form the back-bone of both “soft-proof” and the final print that spews forth from your printer – they’re ducks 2 and 3 respectively.
When getting someone on the “straight and narrow path to print righteousness” I always find it best practice to make them stick to one paper until they are super-familiar with the process, and begin to appreciate the fact that paper choice is the final step in the creative process.
I never want to confuse folk with custom profiles either – if I can get them onto a paper that comes supplied with a reliable OEM profile which includes the relevant MEDIA SETTINGS for the printer (these are crucial) then my work is done.
One paper with a very accurate OEM profile that has media settings as part of the profile name is Permajet Oyster 271. A cracking paper for general purpose printing, it’s finish suits most images, and it’s still my go-to paper for prints of general wildlife and natural history subjects.
But it doesn’t suit everything, and landscapes, seascapes, and other styles of fine art imagery are the sorts of images that spring to mind. It’s paper-white is a little on the cool side for starters – so printing a warm tone image to it increases your soft-proof workload for starters.
So I’m always trying different papers so that I can recommend them to my clients, but no matter how good I find them, I’ll rarely recommend them if the supplied OEM profile is crap. With the profiling gear I use I could get a workable custom profile for toilet paper if I had to, but telling someone new to printing that they need to:
- Spend £1500 on the gear
- Learn how to use what looks like the most scary software GUI on the planet
- Waste 1 or 2 sheets of paper and ink printing the test charts (it’s not a waste really but that’s how they’d see it).
isn’t a real option.
But now I’m in love with two papers from Calumet and their Brilliant Papers Museum range. They are:
- Brilliant Papers Museum Satin Matte Natural
-
Brilliant Papers Museum Inkjet Paper – Satin Matte Natural
- Brilliant Papers Museum Silver Gloss Natural
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Brilliant Papers Museum Inkjet Paper – SilverGloss Natural
Both these papers, in my opinion, are up there with the very best of them. And, while they cost – size for size – twice as much as something like Permajet Oyster; they are both far more than twice as beneficial to the easy production of fine art landscapes and other images that require a bit more from the printer paper to add the final touch.
I’ve used both papers on the Epson R3000 with the Epson ink set, and on my Epson 4800 that carries a Lyson ink set, and all I can say is that I’m more than impressed, and have no trouble in recommending you give them a go.
On the Epson R3000 I used the “canned profiles” downloadable from Brilliant Papers website HERE but you need to understand that Brilliant have not exactly been sensible here and have omitted to give you any indication of correct media settings.
I’ve actually been using media settings of WCRW (water colour radiant white) for the Satin Matte Natural on the R3000 and TFAP (textured fine art paper) on the 4800.
For the Silver Gloss Natural the media settings for both printers have been UPPPL (ultra premium photo paper lustre) and results have been superb.
Just in case you don’t understand why media settings need to be set correctly, different papers require, amongst other things, different inking levels from the print head – too much ink and the print will look dark, too little and it’ll look pale and washed out. There is also the little matter of what’s called “dot gain”. Some papers have a hard glossy surface, others a more rough and porous one. A nozzle droplet of a particular size might be fine on a gloss paper, but that same size droplet on a fine art rag paper might well ‘bleed’ and spread out like it was on blotting paper. This bleeding, or dot gain, leads to a reduction in sharpness of fine detail.
So, media settings are important – they ain’t there for the hell of it you know!
The “canned” profiles plot for the Epson R3000 using MK ink for Satin Matte Natural and PK ink for the Silver Gloss Natural (sRGB included for comparison):
Click to enlarge
And for the 4800:
Click to enlarge
I swapped the plot colours around by mistake – my bad!
I always used to like the look of images printed on Permajets Fine Art Museum 310, but 90% of the time I felt the texture somehow visually ‘got in the way’.
The texture of Brilliant Papers Museum Satin Matte Natural is not quite so pronounced which means I like it better!
In practical terms the colour space of the paper, though ever so slightly smaller than the Permajet Museum paper, does give you slightly deeper blacks and that tiny bit of extra shadow detail clarity. All in all, a very good go-to paper, especially for the more monochromatic image such as:
“The Portal”
The Brilliant Papers Silver Gloss Natural. I find it difficult to actually describe the finish as “gloss” – it’s more like a very fine grained lustre to be honest.
And the difference between the two papers? Well, the Silver Gloss just has that little extra contrast in the medium and darker midtones – it’s a bit like adding 8 or 10 points of clarity to an image inside of the Lightroom Dev module. I’d definitely consider this a great paper for landscape and fine art imagery that contains just that little bit more in terms of colour variation and saturation:
“Stepping Stones to Oblivion”
All in all two very nice papers from the Brilliant Papers range that will be seeing regular use both in my own work, and in my workshops and tuition days; though not exactly budget-priced papers they’re no where near as pricey as some – plus, don’t you think your images are worth it?
And just in case you were wondering; I too was quite surprised at just how well matched the Brilliant canned profiles for the 4800 worked out on my Lyson ink set! I’ve written custom profiles for both of these papers, and there is generally so little difference between the custom and Brilliant profiles (which are really intended for the Epson ink set) that I can’t tell the difference between the prints I’ve done so far – and I’ve done a few!
Though for my own printing I’ll always use my custom icc profiles.
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Paper White – Desktop Printing 101
Paper White video
A while back I posted an article called How White is Paper White
As a follow-up to my last post on the basic properties of printing paper media I thought I’d post this video to refresh the idea of “white”.
In this video we basically look at a range of 10 Permajet papers and simply compare their tints and brightness – it’s an illustration I give at my print workshops which never fails to amaze all the attendees.
I know I keep ‘banging on’ about this but you must understand:
- Very few paper whites are even close to being neutral.
- No paper is WHITE in terms of luminosity – RGB 255 in 8 bit colour terms.
- No paper can hold a true black – RGB 0 in 8 bit colour terms.
In real-world terms ALL printing paper is a TINTED GREY – some cool, some warm.
If we attempted to print the image above on a cool tinted paper then we would REDUCE or even CANCEL OUT the warm tonal effects and general ‘atmosphere’ of the image.
Conversely, print it to a warmer tinted ‘paper white’ and the atmosphere would be enhanced.
Would this enhancement be a good thing? Well, er NO – not if we were happy with our original ‘on screen’ processing.
You need to look upon ‘paper white’ as another TOOL to help you achieve your goal of great looking photographs, with a minimum of fuss and effort on your part.
We have to ‘soft proof’ our images if we want to get a print off the printer that matches what we see on our monitor.
But we can’t soft proof until we have made a decision about what paper we are going to soft-proof to.
Choosing a paper who’s characteristics match our finished ‘on screen’ image in terms of TINT especially, will make the job of soft proofing much easier.
How, why?
Proper soft proofing requires us to make a copy of our original image (there’s most peoples first mistake – not making a copy) and then making adjustments to said copy, in a soft proof environment, so that it it renders correctly on the print – in other words it matches our original processed image.
Printing from Photoshop requires a hard copy, printing from Lightroom is different – it relies on VIRTUAL copies.
Either way, this copy and its proof adjustments are what get sent to the printer along what we call the PRINT PIPELINE.
The print pipeline has to do a lot of work:
- It has to transpose our adjusted/soft proofed image colour values from additive RGB to print CMYK
- It has to up sample or interpolate the image dpi instructions to the print head, depending on print output size.
- It has to apply the correct droplet size instructions to each nozzle in the print head hundreds of times per second.
- And it has to do a lot of other ‘stuff’ besides!!
The key component is the Printer Driver – and printer drivers are basically CRAP at carrying out all but the simplest of instructions.
In other words they don’t like hard work.
Printing to a paper white that matches our image:
- Warm image to warm tint paper white
- Cool image to cool paper white
will reduce to the amount of adjustments we have to make under soft proofing and therefore REDUCE the printer driver workload.
The less work the print driver has to do, the lower is the risk of things ‘getting lost in translation‘ and if nothing gets lost then the print matches the on screen image – assuming of course that your eyes haven’t let you down at the soft proofing stage!
IMPORTANT – Click Image to Enlarge in new window
If we try to print this squirrel on the left to Permajet Gloss 271 (warmish image to very cool tint paper white) we can see what will happen.
We have got to make a couple of tweaks in terms on luminosity BUT we’ve also got to make a global change to the overall colour temperature of the image – this will most likely present us with a need for further opposing colour channel adjustments between light and dark tones.
IMPORTANT – Click Image to Enlarge in new window
Whereas the same image sent to Permajet Fibre Base Gloss Warmtone all we’ll have to do is tweak the luminosity up a tiny bit and saturation down a couple of points and basically we’ll be sorted.
So less work, and less work means less room for error in our hardware drivers; this leads to more efficient printing and reduced print production costs.
And reduced cost leads to a happy photographer!
Printing images is EASY – as long as you get all your ducks in a row – and you’ve only got a handful of ducks to control.
Understanding print media and grasping the implications of paper white is one of those ducks………
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