Calibrating My Home Printer

Question:
I am struggling a lot with thee idea of color management and how it is best to approach it. I am not completely happy with my home printing results. I think I need printer profiling. I can have a printer profile made for $40 each, but I've also considered packages like X-Rite that cost about $1,000. What is the best route to take?

Answer:
Short Answer: I wouldn't do either.

One of the strangest things occurred to me several years ago when I was asked about how I process my images. At the time I was working on my fourth book, after years of doing digital processing and even working pre-press. I had a calibration device, gave people advice, made prints for shows...and my main workstation didn't even have a printer connected to it. In fact, I had a printer or two still in boxs that I never bothered to open. It may seem downright unnatural, but to me there is no need for a printer.

Now, that may seem strange at first, but there is a good reason why I don't have any printing equipment running. I am in the habit, and I think it is a good one, of sending my work out to be printed at a service. To me this has many advantages, not the least of which are cost, convenience, and consistency. These three C's may be a little different than the way most people look at them who are considering working with printers at home, but hear me out.

I use a service for image output and forgo the color profiling for the printer, printer cost, paper expense and maintenance entirely. I save time conceptually and actually not having to worry about issues of profiling for specific paper types, calibrating the monitor, and maintaining the additional software/hardware. I get to print on the most expensive equipment around (these are machines you would never buy for the home) for virtual pennies, and I lose all of the headache that goes with having my own printer, buying and maintaining supplies, potential for maintenance and repair, and finding a place to put it in my office. As long as I go with a good service (that calibrates regularly and uses top-notch equipment, processes, materials, and is responsible for mistakes), my result should be better than I could ever achieve at home.

If you look at cost alone in the proposed scenario, I save $1000 on the X-Rite, another $500 on a top notch home printer, more on paper and inks...and with a few inexpensive tests I can upload images to my service via ftp with confidence in the results, and have far more flexibility for sizing and format than I would at home. In other words, the $1500+ budget for my printer and supplies is something I spend directly on prints instead, without the hassles and headaches, and responsibility for keeping the equipment at peak performance. I am also not fussing with shopping for paper sales, and keeping a stock on hand. I don't have to have a paper cutter...and I am not limited to a smaller size print.

Each print may cost a little more if you look at it as materials alone (paper and ink--though the machines I print on don't use ink). The actual difference is pretty slight. But let's not forget the difference in equipment costs between using a service and printing at home in this scenario: $0 and $1500. It would take me a while to spend that $1500+ dollars in prints, and meanwhile it is earning extra money in interest, or I can invest it in other equipment. At the same time, I might never match the quality of the prints I get at the service, where I get beautiful, digital LED photographic prints on quality photographic paper. I am never longing to upgrade to the next better printer that comes down the pike, I don't have to read articles about home printer technologies, and I can rely on the service to absorb those periodic equipment upgrade expenses.

So, while I am probably fully qualified to run a printer at home and coulkd probably get good results, working without a printer, I can focus on what I do best -- working with my images and focusing on the capture and editing process.

Selling My Prints

Question:
I'm looking for a Gallery with a sales function that will take care of the orders, collection, printing, and shipping to get started selling my images. There just does not seem to be a photo site that has "everything" for a reasonable price/commission.

Answer:
The short answer: You may have to take matters in your own hands.

I don't know of a site that will provide everything from genuine sales opportunities to printing and drop shipping. It is an interesting idea, but I don't know if it is entirely practical from a business standpoint. First, you are asking the business owner to specialize in a lot of things, spanning web commerce, understanding of the market for arts, and knowledge of printing. Second, there is an awful lot of risk in taking on that challenge. Risk comes with a price, and that is why as you get closer to your ideal the services cost more.

A photo gallery site might have a technical web expertise and that might not correspond to having much knowledge of print at all. The site would expose themselves a risk to offer print services for redistribution, unless they were already a service or partnered with one. If you submit files that are not correct and haven't been tested and the service prints them, you will blame the service...and the service will either have to wrangle with disputes, or publish an almost irrational disclaimer. It may be a risk no portfolio-type site is currently willing to take for minimal profits that they'd make on the prints if they job them out, or the investment they'd need to make in printing equipment to provide the necessary services.

On the other hand, if you post your images for sale on a commission-free site ( see http://thefineartoriginals.com for example ), you'd be able to post your images for sale, collect your fees through any service like paypal ( http://www.paypal.com ), and choose any printing service you like to fulfil the job ( I use http://www.color-tech.com which will drop ship ). I send in images via FTP and have tested the prints on their equipment so there is no question that those making a purchase will be satisfied.

My suggestion may be one or two more steps than you'd prefer to take on your own, but you can get started for almost nothing, and you will have better control and understanding of the process -- and ultimately YOU reap more rewards from your sales. As distasteful as it is, artists may have to assume some responsibility for sales and marketing, or pay the premium for those services.

Making Conversions to Infrared

QUESTION:
I have been trying to follow a tutorial for converting my color images to Infrared using Channel Mixer. After moving my Blue slider to said position (-200), the image becomes VERY pixelated and low-res, while the original looked crisp and clean. The magazine mentions nothing about possible pixelation. How can I prevent this ugly pixelation?

ANSWER:
Short answer: You can't. At least not using that exact method with this particular image.

What is probably happening (and this is a PURE GUESS based on looking at the channel information in about 50,000 images and not having seen this image) is that the blue component of the RGB image has some voluminous JPEG artifacts and/or noise present, as sometimes happens, and that is introduced to the result by mixing in the blue component. By going -200 on Blue in the Channel Mixer, it doesn't mean you are removing the influence of the blue component, but you are INVERTING the influence -- and quite strongly. The result will be that any ugliness/damage/compression/artifacts in the blue component will be enhanced in the result.

[ For Elements users, you will need to use at least a component separation to extract RGB or the Hidden Power Channel Mixing tools found on the Hidden Power website http://hiddenelements.com ]

SO, the first thing I would do is check the RGB components and have a good look at the Blue component, and I think you'll see why this technique makes for a bad IR conversion -- at least with that particular image. I have seen images before where the blue component had more compression artifacts than the rest of the components before. You can likely tone it down. For example, you could potentially use a Luminosity and Color (or LAB) conversion to isolate the tone and then perhaps blur the color a little (perhaps not at all). This will lower image color noise.

[ Again, Elements users will probably want to seek the help of Hidden Power tools in making Luminosity and Color separations ]

There are MANY different ways to make an IR conversion, and I have pioneered one myself in my B&W and IR Custom Conversion tool for color images ( see http://hiddenelements.com/elements5_tools.html ). The tool was built for Elements users, but can be used in Photoshop just as well by extracting the files and loading the actions into the Photoshop Actions palette. The places where I think Channel Mixing conversions fail to imitate real infrared is that they don't address standard qualities in IR photos, like black skys, film grain, glowing skin. The conversions may work on one image type and not another, and any conversion that works that was is, more-or-less, an accident that just makes things look a little different than you are used to. Even with compensations, all you get is a mock result: an imitation of infrared and never the equivalent of the real thing.

The only real way to make IR images is to shoot IR exposures, because IR wavelengths are not just a calculation of other image components, they are a completely separate set of qualities that are part-and-parcel of the infrared spectrum. Many digital cameras filter out the IR wavelengths so they don't taint exposure results. Some digital cameras can be modified to remove filters and capture IR light in a more traditional fashion, and/or when used with proper lens filters (e.g., infrared filters that block visible light or key to favor orange or red wavelengths), you may get passible IR results.The results, however, will depend on your camera's ability to capture IR light, as well as the filter you use (more opaque IR filters limit the exposures more to infrared light qualities).

Your end result can only be as good at imitating infrared as your initial capture...or rather it can be better in the end (because you can make heroic adjustments), but you need to have the right info in the initial capture to give you the image information you need to make fabulous infrared images. The choice to filter or not, or modify or not will lead to you needing to use different techniques in adjustment to achieve your desired results. But images with inherent damage (such as a highly compressed blue channel) will likely lead to bad results using any process without further processing to correct the image.

The new Hidden Power Infrared and Custom B&W tool will help you make customized B&W conversions and mock IR. See some sample images with conversions made with the tools here:

http://www.hiddenelements.com/infrared5_tool_samples.htm