One Inkjet Print (continued)

Step 2: (raw digital conversion)

Here's what the corrected histogram looks like in Adobe Camera Raw.

Notice the two spikes on the left and right? That means that there is definite clipping in those areas.

I could have brought these areas into line (lowered them) but I wanted the highlights to be pure white without detail. Same for the lowest values. I didn't want to lose the sense of gleaming and contrast that I felt when I took the shot.

Some tech guy once told me, I can tell if your photograph is exposed properly by looking at the histogram.

No. There is no proper exposure. It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to take a shot of a blank white wall and print it gray - then underexpose a couple of stops and you'll have a correctly exposed negative.

I don't believe you can deterimine "proper exposure" through a histogram alone without understanding the intent of the photographer.

In this case the photograph is mostly about the dark areas and specular highlights. So just let 'em go off the end of the histogram. Now if there was a really wide chunk of spikes going off on the right side, I might have been in trouble.

The contrast, as you can see was upped, as was the saturation. I've found that when converting raw images to black and white, I get an extra umph by upping the saturation. And here, you can see it ain't much.

As I say, I could have flattened the histogram by moving the exposure, contrast, and saturation down - but I would have wound up with something too flat for my taste.

And so, at this point, I'm ready to go into Power Retouche Studio. I haven't done any sharpening or touching up yet

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Step 3: Power Retouche Studio Black and White (Plug-In for Photoshop)

Note: Stay in 16-bit as long as you can. Files sizes and time for processing will be longer, but you aren't throwing away any data.

Here are the default settings:

It would take another article to go through all the options in Power Retouche Studio. But in this example, I'm just doing a straight-conversion. If you do start using the sliders and making adjustments, keep in mind that these are "destructive," i.e. you may be tossing away some data-bits. The highlight Alert and Black Alert give you a good idea of what is being tossed.

Another note, we're still working on the full-sized file.

CONTINUE TO PAGE 3

Making One Inkjet Print on the Epson 4800 Printer