Tim Grey’s Blog

I shouldn’t even be writing this blog post, but here I am. Blame it on the relief of finally getting the Winter 2008 issue of Digital Darkroom Quarterly out the door, a bit late because of various “challenges”.

One of those challenges ended up being my fault. I went to the printer to review the proof, and I wasn’t happy with the cover. It was too yellow. And it is a photo of snow. And you can’t have yellow snow. I think the printer was hoping I would just let it slide. But I’m way too particular when it comes to things like this (actually, I’m pretty much too particular about everything, but that’s an entirely different story).

I have to admit, I was embarrassed there was a color problem with the cover image. I thought for sure it had to be a problem with the press, not my image. Turns out that was pure denial. I got home, pulled up the image, kicked up the saturation, and saw lots and lots of yellow. How did I miss it?!

The fact is, it’s pretty darn easy to miss things like this. I use a calibrated monitor display, and I like to think I have a really good eye for color casts. But sometimes they’re difficult to see. Which is why it is so important to do a thorough review of your image, looking for various problems. That’s why I often recommend doing a quick Hue/Saturation adjustment up to a full +100 Saturation to make sure there aren’t any weird colors lurking in the image, then cancel (and of course correct the image if necessary). Another good idea is to look at the individual color channels to look for image quality problems you might not otherwise notice. And review the image at 100% scale to evaluate sharpness. And don’t forget that histogram! You get the idea…

Remember the days when this sort of stuff was left to a technician you probably never met? They call those the “film days”. Things are different now. But I won’t go back. While digital puts more of a burden on photographers to get things right, it also offers a tremendous amount of control, flexibility, and opportunity for creativity that I would never want to lose.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Printing, Philosophical, Digital. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.