OUTPUTTING from PHOTOSHOP and PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM by A

OUTPUTTING FROM PHOTOSHOP AND PHOTOSHOP LIGHTROOM By A. Cemal Ekin, PhD (RI)

INTRODUCTION In this session, I will present a workflow that, when adhered to, will produce predictable results. Quite a while ago, John Szarkowski, the director The aim is not to produce a print, but be able to print of photography at MoMA said “There are more pho- what you see on your monitor any time. Keep in tographs in the world than bricks.” Today, bricks mind that a print will never look exactly like the im- can no longer be a yardstick after the advent of digi- age you see on the screen because they have differ- tal, and later, on phone cameras. There are over 300 ent models. Whereas we see the print after light re- million photographs uploaded to Facebook every flects from it, we see the monitor image by the light day. And, that’s not even a photo sharing site! De- it emits. That said, the print should come as close to spite the explosion of the numbers of photographs a the screen image as possible. small fraction of them actually get printed. One esti- mate puts the number of prints made a year at 27 WHY IS PRINTING SO CONFUSING billion in one year. That number is less than three months’ worth of uploads to Facebook. The biggest source of confusion is the concepts of “color” and “tonality.” We call a color “red” I like prints, I am a print person, I want to hold a which may mean something slightly different to photograph in my hand before I call it a photograph. someone else. Not only that, the terminology we use There are many print fans like me; I am sure many in daily language is different from the scientific ter- who attend this conference, more specifically this minology that drives the software. For instance, session, like prints. As much as imaging technology what we call color, like red, purple, blue, etc. is ac- has advanced, and the print quality has increased tually called “hue.” Take a look at the following tremendously, the link between the digital image and blocks, which one is “red”? the print has remained more convoluted than print fans would like. The reason lies mainly in the vast number of variables, monitors, video cards, printers, papers, ink, software that are in the path of this link between the virtual and the real photograph.

Figure 2 What is red?

They are awfully close, right? It is difficult to put your finger on one with certainty. What you see Figure 1 Monitor and printer difference on your display may be different from what I saw when I created this, the light shining on your moni-

• 94 • tor may deceive you, or the color of the wall behind concept we call “color” actually consists of three your monitor may change the way you perceive the components, hue, saturation, and luminance. Imag- colors on the monitor. It is obvious that visual as- ine a balloon inflated to a certain level, hue will be sessment of color is not a reliable method, and it wrapped around it in the middle, saturation will go never will be. Because of this, and for other tech- from outside to the center where it will have no sat- nical reasons, numerical representation of color of- uration, and luminance will be on the vertical axis fers a far more reliable method of referring to them higher points being brighter, more luminous than and even more importantly, making adjustments to the lower points. The level to which the balloon is them. inflated represents its “gamut,” the amount of color information it can represent. If we inflate or deflate COLOR NAMES CONFUSE the balloon we will arrive at different gamut levels. I give you spray paint cans with colors on their In reality, color gamut of any hardware or soft- labels as shown in Figure 2 and ask you to paint the ware is not as neatly formed as a round balloon, nor wall “Red.” The potential for error is obvious. One are we at arbitrary liberty to inflate or deflate it. way to eliminate the confusion is to not use the col- Each piece of hardware, software, ink, paper, and or name but identify the spray can with a number or their combination will have their uniquely defined a name, like Can #3. gamut. The important part in color management is to make sure that we use a well-defined concept of Photo editing software uses this idea of identify- color that can be consistently converted from one ing “colors” with numbers. On a typical Photoshop device to the next, from software to paper, and so file, colors are broken into component parts of Red, on. This idea of well-defined concept of color is Green, and Blue and each channel contains the in- what we call a “color space,” which should not be tensity of each color. Interestingly, these are repre- confused with the color model of using RGB or sented as shades of gray, going from black to white. CMYK. The best known and most widely used col- In an edit session, all the adjustments we make in or spaces are sRGB, Adobe RGB, and Prophoto, Photoshop or Lightroom map the existing color lev- each having progressively greater color gamut, thus, els to desired color levels on each channel. the ability to represent the colors more accurately before, during, and after the edit session. Figure 3 COLOR IN SOFTWARE shows a comparison of two widely used color spac- Image is displayed and adjusted in software that es, Adobe RGB and sRGB. It is easy to see in this can internally know exactly how much R, G, B may image what sRGB may be missing compared to exist at every pixel location. However, how much it can define and use depend on various factors like the color space assigned to the image, the ability of the monitor to show colors, accuracy of the display, the ability of the software to work in different color spaces, and so on. In other words, there is an inter- nal language of color that hardware and software need to know in order for us to see the colors accurately and adjust them to our desired levels.

COLOR MANAGEMENT AND COLOR GAMUT To achieve consistent print output, or any kind of output, a color-managed workflow is essential. At every step of the process, we need to know exactly what color we are talking about and how we are af- fecting it through adjustments or outputting. The Figure 3 Adobe RGB vs sRGB Gamuts

• 95 • Adobe RGB. Of course, Prophoto is even a much not know that the conversion has been made it will larger color space compared to Adobe RGB. try to convert them again. It is absolutely essential to avoid double color management. It is important to Just as Adobe RGB and sRGB color gamuts differ, so do monitor and printer/paper combinations. point out the opposite, no color management, is Take a look at the color gamut of Epson Exhibition equally undesirable for a similar reason. Fiber paper and Adobe RGB. Clearly, the paper is WORK ENVIRONMENT

BEWARE OF LIGHT AND REFLECTION ON MONI- TOR Just as we photographers insist on acquiring good quality lenses, cameras, filters, tripods, etc. we must also insist on using good quality monitors and display calibration and profiling hardware and software. I cannot over emphasize the importance of a good monitor that is routinely calibrated and pro- filed. Without this, it is a crap shoot, fishing in murky water, trying to find a needle in a haystack blind-folded… I guess you get my drift!

SURROUND YOURSELF WITH NEUTRAL COLORS The second important point to keep in mind is to work in an environment where there are no strong Figure 4 Adobe RGB vs Exhibition Fiber Paper colors, like a red wall, or large green window shades. Our perceptual system is a superb one but it not capable of rendering all the colors available in is subject to environmental influence. The red wall Adobe RGB, clipping will occur. behind your monitor will cause you to see the colors on your monitor differently, slightly but significant- PRINTER ly enough. Best is to have no surrounding color, at An inkjet printer is essentially a very precise least no strong surrounding color around your moni- spray can that can use different spray cans simulta- tor. Also important is the direction and the amount neously. The color model used by printers is differ- of light around the digital processing work area. ent from that of monitors; they use CMYK and sub- Avoid sitting near windows, having windows direct- tractive color model. The printed image absorbs, ly behind you, or at angles that could spill light on subtracts some colors and reflects others, leaving your monitor changing the composition of the color the sliver of the color spectrum we should see. you see. Using a monitor hood can help minimizing Although the mixture of Cyan, Magenta, and Yel- or eliminating most of these issues. These are not low can produce sufficient spectrum to give us the just fanciful suggestions; I feel very strongly about color image we see, the process also adds some them and practice what I preach diligently. amount of black ink to shade the hues to provide crisper photographs with better tonality. Here we WORKFLOW face the first hurdle to overcome in printing digital photographs, how and when do we convert the RGB GOOD CAPTURE information to CMYK model? The fundamental rule The old adage GIGO, garbage in garbage out is this: You may allow the software, like Photoshop applies to photography very well. Yes, after capture or Lightroom, or the printer but not both. The reason post processing can make up for some mistakes, but is very simple, if the software converts the RGB the capture workflow must be as solid as post pro- colors to the amount of CMYK inks to be sprayed cessing workflow. There are photographers who and sends them to the printer, and if the printer does disagree with this, but I will recommend very

• 96 • strongly capturing your images in RAW format if COMMON STEPS your camera supports it. Today, even some point and shoot cameras support RAW format. The ad- SINGLE COLOR MANAGEMENT POINT vantages far outweigh the extra storage space the The conversion of colors in the software, Pho- RAW files may take. The color space setting is not toshop or Lightroom, can take place in the software really material for RAW images since they have not or in the printer. But you must make sure that it been converted to pixel-based images carrying color does not happen at both places, or no place. I rec- information yet. Most DSLR cameras capture 14-bit ommend using Adobe color conversion engine for images with much more information than any JPEG the simple reason that regardless of the printer you format can even imagine. Post processing RAW im- may use the process will be the same. We will turn ages will allow for greater flexibility and bring in off color management in the printer dialog window maximum amount of information to your software, and let either Photoshop or Lightroom manage col- Photoshop or Lightroom. or. This is done differently in these programs, so let us travel on each leg of the fork. IMPORT AND DEVELOP You may use a different workflow, but I favor importing my images into Lightroom and during the import applying some cataloging keywords, and maybe even apply some common adjustments I gen- erally make like lens corrections. After the import, select the photographs that deserve careful develop- ing and eventual printing. In Lightroom, I create collections that allow me to quickly find the group of photographs I want to work with. If you import and organize your photographs using other software than Lightroom, like Bridge, and open your images in Photoshop camera raw make sure to import them to Photoshop in 16-bit format and in ProPhoto color space. This will maximize the image information which in turn will minimize or eliminate creating Figure 5 Photoshop Print Window artifacts during heavy editing like posterization or banding. If you work in Lightroom, you are always PHOTOSHOP CS6 PRINT DIALOG working with the RAW data and all the edits are In Photoshop, follow the menu path File/Print to non-destructive. arrive at the printing dialog window as shown below. PRINTING Following the numbered sequence, make sure The workflow will fork here depending on that the correct printer is selected, in the color man- whether you print from Lightroom or Photoshop, or agement option Photoshop is designated as the color whether you print to your printer or create files to management tool, in the printer profile window se- send to your photo lab like Printmakers, Inc. How- lect the printer and the paper that will be used, pick ever, what is essential before the road splits is to the desired rendering intent, and go to print settings. make sure that the photograph is edited carefully, So far we have told Photoshop how to convert the free from editing artifacts, and adjustments are ap- colors from the document color space to the destina- plied with restraint and finesse. tion color space and eventually send the converted data to the printer. In this example I have chosen Epson Exhibition Fiber paper on an Epson 4880 printer.

• 97 • L IGHTROOM PRINT MODULE duce the control window in figure 7 on this printer, Lightroom print module has several panels an Epson 4880. Make the adjustments as you see, where various parameters are set, like the margins, and remember your printer settings may be different. whether to rotate image to fit the paper format or You still need to pick the right substrate, select the zoom to fill. Those are artistic judgments you need desired print quality, and turn color management off. to make. I would like to focus on the workflow pan-  Choose the Media Type to correspond to what el “Print Job.” As you see in the image below, the you will be using. This needs to correspond to destination is selected as “Printer,” application of the setting made in Photoshop or Lightroom standard print sharpening is chosen, and the color print control window. Follow the paper manu- management section shows the substrate as Epson facturer’s instructions on what media type to choose if your printer does not have the exact substrate you are using.  Turn off printer color management, Click on the radio button “Custom,” and then choose “Off.”  Adjust Paper Settings, pay attention to paper type, output resolution, paper feed, paper size, and orientation.  Optionally, save settings and click OK.  Your printer settings may look different.

BACK IN PHOTOSHOP OR LIGHTROOM Review settings, load your paper, click “Print,” and watch that beautiful print to emerge.

Figure 6 Lightroom Print Panel

Exhibition Fiber printed on Epson 4880 printer, along with the rendering intent of Perceptual. These are fairly standard setting sequences, what will change is the substrate and possibly the printer if you have more than one.

PRINTER SETTINGS After adjusting the settings in software, the printer needs to be instructed to behave in a particular way. Namely, do not mess with color conversion; understand the substrate that will be used; get ready to spray ink according to the characteristics of the substrate. We do this by summoning the printer control window from Photoshop by clicking on the “Print Settings” button or the “Page Setup” button in Light- room at the bottom of the left panel, which will pro- Figure 7 Printer Control Window

• 98 • PROOFING SOFT PROOF SETUP IN PHOTOSHOP From the menu, follow View/Proof Setup/ It is quite likely that your first test print will Custom as shown in figure 8. have a few things wrong with it. It may have the wrong tonality, poor color rendering, and some The next window, shown in figure 9 allows se- blemishes you have not noticed before, and so on. lecting the proper output profile and rendering in- To increase the odds of getting better prints with tent. Since I intend to print this photograph on Ep- fewer waste sheets we can use soft and hard proof- son Exhibition Fiber paper using Epson 4880 printing. Soft proofing in Photoshop and Lightroom 4 er, I highlighted that profile and then chose Relative can give us an approximate idea of out of gamut Colorimetric as my rendering intent. In the drop- colors, tonal range, color rendering before we com- down menu for this purpose, there are two meaning- mit to paper. After you view the soft proof on screen ful choices for photographic output: Relative Color- you still need to produce a hard proof, even if it is a imetric and Perceptual. They are the herding dogs section of the full image, to see the actual output on the substrate you will be using. While doing these, if you take notes of the changes you are making you can refer to them after the proof print comes out. It is quite possible that you may end up adding one or more adjustment layers to optimize printed output. One important different between Photoshop and Lightroom is the ability to accommodate CMYK profiles. Photoshop can use your photo lab’s color profile to let you see the soft proof on screen even if the profile is in CMYK color model. Lightroom cannot currently accept CMYK profiles for proof-

Figure 9 Soft Proof Custom Setup for out of gamut colors and bring them back inside the gamut space of the output medium. They differ in how they pull those out of gamut colors in. As a rule of thumb, if there are large and significant areas that are out of gamut and cannot be manually adjusted, use perceptual, if there are small areas out of gamut use relative colorimetric. After this initial setup you can, and perhaps you should, save this as a setting that you can use any- time you wish to soft proof for this printer-paper combination. After it is saved, you are looking at the image in proof colors which may slightly or signifi- cantly change the tonal and color rendering. If you are using a calibrated monitor and have a good edit workflow, chances are the difference is not too sig- Figure 8 Softproof Setup nificant. However, you do not know if there are areas with out of gamut colors. To see them, we need ing, so lab output profiling is not easy in Lightroom. to turn on “Gamut Warning” in View/Gamut Warn- ing. Any out of gamut color are will be shown in bright green as you see in figure 10.

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Figure 11 Lightroom Soft Proof Panel

Figure 10 Our of gamut colors HARD PROOF

In this instance, the gamut warning is indicating As useful as soft proofing may be, it is only an the blue color on their belt is out of gamut and a tiny approximation. To get a better feel for the actual out- speck of area on his hair. I may decide that the color put you need to produce an actual print on the same shift will not be significant or in a significant area, paper. You can select an important area and print or add an adjustment layer to correct the situation. only that part on a smaller size paper for economy; Remember to turn off gamut warning and proof col- of course I mean smaller size of the same paper. ors after you are done soft-proofing. Use small size for economy of paper and ink. Try to fix with global adjustments. SOFT PROOF SETUP IN LIGHTROOM Soft-proofing is an option in the Develop module Can do both in Photoshop and Lightroom. in Lightroom, and this probably makes eminent sense since any necessary adjustments will be made PRINT EVALUATION there. In the Develop module, look at the tool bar But, wait, don’t look at it unless you have a light below the image. If the toolbar is not there, simply source that is daylight balanced or close to it. Re- press T to toggle it. You will see a checkbox there member, your monitor emits light whereas your next to “Soft Proofing.” The top panel on the right print is viewed in reflected light. If you do not have will change to reflect the tools necessary for soft the right quality and amount of light falling on it, it proofing. There you will select the printer-paper pro- will look darker than it really is. There are various file, rendering intent, and whether to simulate the viewing lights. I understand Solux makes excellent paper & ink. If you see out of gamut warning, you quality lights, but I settled on a floor-standing Ott- can make the necessary changes using any of the lite using daylight color fluorescent bulbs. Experts tools in the develop module. As you make the first told me that there could be spikes in the color spec- adjustment, Lightroom will ask if you would like to trum of these lights but so far it has performed very create a proof copy with all the corrections you may well for me. Also remember to wait 20-30 minutes apply to it. It is nothing more than another virtual before critically evaluating your print as some colors copy of the image with the printer and paper profile may get slightly darker as they dry. Then place it name added to it to distinguish it. It is probably a under the viewing light and carefully evaluate the good idea to do that. In order to see the out of gamut output. colors, you need to click on the output gamut warning icon on the top right corner of the histogram as PROOF STRATEGY shown in figure 11. If the print is not to your expectations with areas that are too dark or too light, or too saturated or not

• 100 • saturated enough, how do you find the right amount of adjustments? In the darkroom days, we used to make test prints with different exposure strips. We can use a similar strategy in the digital workflow as well. I learned a method from John Paul Caponigro during a week-long workshop which works only in Photoshop, but can be emulated in Lightroom to some extent using the Graduated Filter tool.

BRACKET PROOFING (PHOTOSHOP ONLY) Create the needed adjustment layer, say Hue & Saturation. Aggressively adjust the saturation, go overboard. Add a layer mask if one is not there already. Fill with gradient B&W horizontally or vertical- ly. Posterize (Image/Adjustments/Posterize) with 6- 8 steps (see figures 12 and 13). Figure 12 How to Posterize mask Print and evaluate, choose the part you like. This will indicate what level of gray in the mask is pro- is easier from Lightroom than it is from Photoshop ducing the best rendering of the adjustment. but can easily be modified to suit that as well. Fill the entire mask with the gray shade of that spot. PREPARE THE IMAGE Ready to print now. In Lightroom, go to the Print module. Here you need to change the destination from Printer to JPEG OUTPUT FOR LAB PRINTING File under the Print Job panel. Put a check mark next to “Custom File Dimensions” and using the print Making your own prints is part of your creative size catalog from your photo lab, enter the paper size process, you get quick feedback, control the choice you would like to use into the width and height win- of substrate and many other variables. However, dows. See the example in Figure 14. Adjust the print there are times you need the help of a photo lab to sharpening setting and the media type as glossy or produce the desired output because they may offer a matte. For profile, follow your lab’s instructions, substrate not available for your printer, like metallic prints, or larger size prints than your printer can accommodate. I used a mail order lab for a while until I discovered one under my nose, Printmakers, Inc. in Pawtucket, RI. To get the maximum quality from your lab you need to fully understand their requirements and how you submit the photographs. For instance, Printmak- ers recommends using 240dpi images but will use 300dpi if your file is set to that. I will describe my workflow which works for me, you may choose any variant of it as you see it fit. By the way, this process Figure 13 How the posterize mask looks

• 101 • Printmakers can work with sRGB or Adobe RGB profiles. After the print job is set up, you can now refine the output by using a background color and even a

Figure 15 Lightroom Print to File settings

Figure 14 Lightroom Print to File Printmakers or any other lab for that matter. The transfer software they use will be similar or even short block of text as the example shows. Unfortu- identical with different branding and pricing infor- nately there is no easy way to position the text block mation. nor is there a way to enter two lines of text. Once the eFTP program is running, look for the You can decide on the margins, image size, etc. type of print you would like. Since I provide ready to print photographs, I choose studio prepared prints. using the Layout panel. Then choose the paper type and size selection. You After everything looks the way you want, click will now see a blank canvas in front of you. Using on “Print to File” and give it a name that will identi- the navigation tools on the right side panel, point to fy the photograph. Lightroom does not automatically the folder where your prepared photograph is wait- use the file name for some reason but I enter the file ing. You may prepare more than one image and then name with additional text that shows the print size. upload them all at the same time, same or different size for each photograph. Drag the photograph into UPLOAD THE PRINT IMAGE the canvas area. You will see that it is a perfect fit Now that your image is ready you need to trans- because we chose the dimensions in the print job fer it to your lab. I use Printmakers’ eFTP program panel to correspond to the paper size we will order. which I find easier to use than their ProDesign, but This print is now ready to add to the queue, click on you make your own choice. The first time you use the button to do that. Repeat for each photograph. If this software you need to set up an account with

• 102 • even a 32”x40”. I don’t know what the point of di- minishing returns may be, but I have tested the 16”x20” to 24”x30” with no visible loss in print quality, but your mileage may vary.

PRINT PROBLEMS

BANDING Check high speed setting, turn off if on. Check nozzle, clean nozzles. Head too close (on some printers adjustable).

INK BEADING Printed on wrong side of paper, pay attention!

PALE COLORS Wrong paper selection, correct selection. Poor or no monitor calibration, calibrate monitor. Figure 16 Lightroom Print to File Layout COLOR CAST you are ordering prints of the same size of more Magenta: Double color managed, check soft- than one photograph, you can select them all on the ware and printer settings. right hand panel and drag them on to the canvas. Green: No color management, check software You will see a message that will alert you that you and printer settings. will order one of each of these photographs to be printed. PARTIAL IMAGE PRINTED When you place all the images you want printed Wrong paper size. to the order, click on the shopping cart and follow instructions. One additional benefit of using a photo ABOUT CEMAL lab like Printmakers is the ease with which you can Cemal retired from get different size prints from the same file. They use Providence College in very sophisticated resizing software that can pro- 2012 as Professor duce from your 16”x20” file, an 8”x10”, a 24”x30”, Emeritus. Teaching has been a great expe- rience, affected his photography, and how he shares what he knows with others. That, in turn has helped me to learn more about photography, my photography, the art of photography. “I am an interested, curious observer, fully self- taught photographer through practice, experimenta- tion, failures, reading and looking at photographs. I Figure 17 Printmakers eFTP write about photography to sharpen my understand- ing of it.”

• 103 • Cemal has been involved in photography over 60 years, but digital photography has been a fertile ground for him since the early 1990s. He learned the tools of this new world, Photoshop and Lightroom, and is totally comfortable in them. He enjoys sharing what he knows in presentations, workshops, private mentoring and tutorials. “My photographs present my vision and I keep an open mind about making all necessary adjustments to my photographs to convey my vision. De- spite that, I strive to produce work that is free from processing artifacts and look “effortlessly done.” Cemal has had six solo exhibits in three cities; issued limited and open edition folios; published photo books and magazines featuring his work. His prints are in public and private collections in the USA and abroad. The prestigious magazine, LensWork published more than 70 photographs from his Infrared Earthscapes series in November 2011. He is included in the first edition of Interna- tional Masters of Photography published in Decem- ber 2012. Festival Ballet Providence commissioned an original ballet inspired by and featuring a collec- tion of his photographs of dried orchids. The ballet, Orchis, was performed on March 8-10, 2012 in Providence. http://www.keptlight.com/

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