LensWork Technology Blog

Textured paper and inkjet printing

I've had a number of people ask me about my use of textured backgrounds in my inkjet prints. The natural question is am I printing on textured paper? As much as that would be a seductive idea, I can't imagine that an inkjet printer could succeed very well if the paper was extremely textured, primarily because of the simple physical problems of both coaching the paper and spray of those tiny inkjet droplet.

   

   

Instead, I simply create an image that is the textured background. In my recent work, the Living Landscape exhibition for China, I used some textures that I made some 10 years ago. I started by scanning Japanese paper cut designs as high-resolution black-and-white line drawings. In Photoshop, I then converted them to grayscale images and used a level control adjustment to turn them into medium-gray-and-white images. Once that was complete, I was ready to create the texture — the part of the process is where things get really interesting.

   

   

In the spirit of true confession, this is the one and only practical use I've ever found for the software I originally purchased as Fractal Painter. (I think it's now owned by Corel and is simply known as Painter.) It's a fascinating and seductive piece of software. I just never found a use for it in my photography other than its ability to create these wonderful textures. When I purchased it years ago, it included dozens of paper textures that can be applied to any image. Most importantly, the paper texture can be controlled as to size, depth of texture, strength of lighting, direction of lighting, and a half-dozen other characteristics that allow you to create, essentially, any texturized paper/image you can imagine.

After considerable experimenting, I found the right combination of paper texture and depth that I thought would make wonderful backdrops for photographs. At the time, I never did find a photographic project that I could use this technique with, so they've languished on my hard drive now for some 10 years. From time to time I resurrect them to see if they'll work with some project I'm currently working on. This new exhibition that combines my fan shaped images with classical Chinese poetry was the perfect project to employ these old paper texture images. I was able to resurrect half a dozen of these and finally find a use for them that fit the project perfectly.

   

   

Each piece in the new exhibition is constructed of half a dozen components. First, the paper texture image creates the background. On top of that, I placed a simple box with a fill color. By changing the fill color and its opacity, I was able to create just the right density and hue for the backdrop that complemented the image without overwhelming it.

Next I imported the photographic image and modified its container shape so that the photograph becomes this fan-shaped presentation. (This is the same idea I used in the Uchiwa-e series, although I modified the shape for this project.) To this fan-shaped InDesign object I apply a subtle drop shadow.

Next I bring in the Chinese poem into its own text box and apply a paragraph style to determine its typeface characteristics. This text box also has an object style that employees rounded corners and a white fill that is throttled back to about 40% opacity. This gives the text that lighter backdrop that helps its readability and makes it a distinct item on the page. By using an opacity setting, the paper texture is still visible behind the text box and makes it almost appear that the text is on a tissue sheet. Finally, the text and graphic on the bottom of the page round out the design. These latter elements are actually included on an InDesign master page so their positioning is uniform throughout the project.

This kind of project is a lot more intense in terms of its design elements than the standard photographic project of my youth. We used to simply slap the image in a beveled window-cut, white mat board. The kind of design work I've included in this project would have been unheard of back them, but I find it a much more interesting creative pursuit to add these design elements where they are appropriate for the project. It expands my role beyond "photographer" and deep into the realm of designer. For me, this is exciting, particularly because I know that I have a safety net — I can always employ a professional graphic designer in any project in which I feel I'm in over my head.

From Lightroom to InDesign

I just began using Lightroom and am enjoying its many advantages over Bridge but I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the integration of LR with InDesign. What is the best way to import the images into ID if using LR? I figure you use the same command (File - Place) but with LR, the physical location of the files stays in the original folders ( could be many locations) because LR doesn't actually create and relocate the files into one handy spot. When I used to use Bridge/Photoshop, I would be making copies of the edited files as I went and locating them in one file for a particular project. I assume that one makes copies somehow through LR in much the same way as I did in Bridge?

— Donna Kirkpatrick

Keep in mind that Lightroom doesn't do anything to your original files (the ones you imported into Lightroom) until you actually export them out of Lightroom. Even the adjustments you do in Lightroom don't actually do anything to the original files — they are just as set of instructions Lightroom will use during the "export" process, keeping in mind that by "export process" this could mean an actual export to a new file, an output to print, or output to a web page. Essentially, somehow you have to tell Lightroom to apply the adjustment instructions to the original file in some way or another. Typically, I either export a new file for specific use in an InDesign layout (e.g., LensWork, LensWork Extended, a LensWork Folio, etc.) or I use Lightroom's Web Module to have it use my adjustment instructions to make a web image.

So, there is no direct link from Lightroom to InDesign. The workflow looks something like this:

1. Import the original images (from the digital camera or from scans) into Lightroom. Typically, these are brand-specific RAW files of some kind from the digital camera, depending on the brand of camera you have. In the import process, you have the option to convert these camera-specific file formats to the universal DNG format, which I always do.
2. Do any creative and corrective adjustments you can in Lightroom to the imported files. Keep in mind, anything you do at this stage is only a set of instructions within Lightroom that do not change the DNG file in any way. They are just instructions waiting for the next step, the export process.
3. If necessary, I'll move an image into Photoshop for pixel remapping work using the "Edit in Photoshop" command. Once I've completed any work on the image in Photoshop, I close the file which is then saved in the same location as the original file but as a second-generation PSD file. I'll then go back to Lightroom where this second-generation PSD file automatically included in the Lightroom catalog without needing to import it. All future steps are then done to this Photoshop from the Lightroom catalog. You can always go back to the original if you need to, but doing so will lose any changes you made while in Photoshop.
4. Export the fully finished file (either the original with the Lightroom adjustments or the Photoshop second generation file, whichever is now the completed rendition) from Lightroom to a new folder that holds the finished files for use in the InDesign layout.
5. In InDesign, place these exported files into the layout.

You will always have at least two files — the original in the Lightroom catalog (DNG) and the exported file that incorporates all the Lightroom adjustments (in whatever format you need, typically TIF, JPG, PSD). You may have more than these two if you also took a side round-trip through Photoshop to do something that you can only do in Photoshop. It's possible to have a workflow that is import to Lightroom, work in Photoshop, back to Lightroom for more work, back to Photoshop again, back to Lightroom, then finally export to the finished file. In this case, you actually have a DNG original, two PSD interim versions, and a final output.

Make sense?

Lightroom's Print module

I've been experimenting with a similar schema recently using a Lightroom based workflow, piping my output into Apple's Pages layout application and thence into PDF format. I know you use InDesign for this, but frankly I'm not convinced it can do a better job, and it is more expensive than I care to pay for the uses I would put it to. I'm having good success with the concept so far, but a couple of questions have come up that I hoped you might respond to.

• In exporting finished work from Lightroom for your InDesign workflow, how do you size the output for specific layout target sizings?
• Again in the export, do you pick TIFF .. 8 bit or 16 bit, or JPEG, and sRGB or Adobe RGB profile?
• The resulting PDF you create out of InDesign ... how well does it scale for a range of print sizings? Or do you make a PDF file specific for each of your print products?
• Have you considered Lightroom's Print module and its capability to save printing templates coupled with image collections vs the InDesign printing workflow? Obviously, this would not have all the bells and whistles for page layout that InDesign or Pages might, but for simple layout and annotation purposes it might prove effective for a lot of work.

Thanks for your thoughts!

—Godfrey DiGiorgi

   

My workflow relies heavily on a simple strategy that is Lightroom-centric in its basic concept:

Masters

• The master image is a full resolution file at the native camera pixel dimensions or scan dimensions
• These master images are, of course, all ProPhoto color space, the native color space for Lightroom
• I always scan negatives as 16-bit, typically at 1,200 dpi. Archive prints are scanned 16-bit, 100% size, at 600 dpi.
• Images from the camera are whatever the RAW output is, typically 8-bit, but could be 12-bit if the camera uses it. (Do any cameras output 16-bit files? Not that I'm aware of.)
• Camera RAW files are converted to a DNG file when I import them into Lightroom. The original camera RAW format file (SR2, RAF, ORF, RW2, etc.) are archived on an external drive should I ever need them.
• I'll do as much finishing "darkroom" work in Lightroom as possible so as to take advantage of its non-destructive editing. Often, I can finish an image entirely using only Lightroom adjustments.
• If I need to open a DNG file in Photoshop for some reason (see below), these are usually 16-bit PSD images, but I sometimes cheat and use 8-bit if I know I won't need the extra data (e.g., for smoothing out gradients or for lots of post-processing).
• The most common use of Photoshop for me is when I need to do more controlled noise reduction than I can achieve in Lightroom (version 2). In Photoshop, I use Noiseware Pro.
• I'll move an image into Photoshop if it needs: heavy spotting, noise reduction with Noiseware Pro, layers or sophisticated masking, extensive cloning, stitching, or other pixel remapping. I'll still keep the DNG and its Lightroom adjustments, but the PSD file becomes the new master for output from Lightroom as needed for specific projects.
• So, my Lightroom masters are either DNG files (digital capture) or PSD files (scans or Photoshopped DNG offspring).

Finished images/projects

• I export new images out of Lightroom from these masters for specific needs.
• Each export is sized (pixel dimensions) with the required resolution (ppi) for that need.
• I do not try to make a single image that can be scaled as needed in a variety of projects. I tend to think of each project independently and prefer to make images for each project that fit its particular needs.
• I'll almost always output images from Lightroom as 8-bit, Adobe RGB (1998). For printing, I output as PSD at 300 dpi, sized for placement into InDesign at 100%. I don't use TIF files (see this post and its comments). For PDFs, I output JPGs at 200 dpi, again for placement in the InDesign file at 100%. In either of these cases, if I later decide to use a smaller image, I just resize down in InDesign and let the PDF export do the secondary JPEG resize and compression. If I later decide to make a larger image in my layout, I return to Lightroom and re-export a new image. I never upsize or upres in InDesign or in exporting from InDesign.
• For large web images, I use JPEGs output at 96 dpi, sized to a specific pixel dimension as needed in the HTML layout. Again, I export into the Adobe RGB color space. I've never used sRGB in spite of the fact that this is the recommended color space for web images, but I suppose there might be some reason I should. Since most of my work is (toned) b/w, I've never felt there was much advantage to such hair-splitting in the color space selection.
• For small web images, thumbnails, other graphics, I use PNG because the file sizes are smaller in small images.

I looked at Lightroom's print module, but for my use there is no advantage and quite a number of disadvantages. Layout is such a crucial part of my workflow that I can't think of a single reason I would give up the control available in InDesign.

There is one other factor that comes into play in my workflow. I almost never print my own images. My assistant, Crystal, does all my printing for me and then simply brings me the printed images to approve or reject, go back into Lightroom or Photoshop to tweak, or to simply accept and sign. We've found it's much easier for her to print from a finished PDF file. All our printer-ready PDFs reside in folders on our server that contains only printer-ready test files or printing-approved final PDFs.

And, odd as it sounds, on the rare occasion when I do some printing myself, I find the "finished PDF" a better workflow for me, too. The PDF encapsulates everything I did to finish a print at the time I created it. If I need to make a print six months (or six years) later, I don't have to remember how to do it, or what settings I used, or whether or not the Lightroom template has been modified, etc. The PDF is a great way to avoid all such reliance on trying to repeat what I did back then.

Also, my work evolves over time. Today I might make different decisions about how a print needs to be made than I did six months ago. Maybe I'm seeing things differently. Maybe my creative vision for the image has changed. Maybe I'm now using a different paper or a different printer. As the "editions" of an image change over time, each PDF of the printer-ready layout encapsulates the evolution of the image, creating in essence a history of that image. Since the PDF is a self-contained file, it leaves me free to make adjustments to the image in Lightroom/Photoshop without losing any history over the years. I could, I suppose, rely on the InDesign files, but linked images are subject to broken links and lost files, InDesign version updates have been known to change text layouts subtly, and if my computer no longer has some specialty font or if a font version has been updated, the layouts in InDesign might require attention to bring them back into printable form. All of this is avoided by simply producing and preserving the PDF as the master archive for each print or project.

One other thing occurs to me that might add to this discussion. I'll often need an illustration of a print layout — say for a web page sample, for use in a Premiere Pro video project, or to include in an email. Rather than send a JPEG of the photo only created from Lightroom, I can export a JPEG right out of InDesign of the full layout. Multipage InDesign documents will create a separate JPEG image for each page — handy! (BTW, exporting out of InDesign as a JPEG can be done at any resolution and on occasion I've done 300dpi JPG exports and then just printed the JPG from any old program. Crude, but it works.)

Lastly, what if I need to send an email of a printer layout to someone and I don't have the original InDesign layout? Believe it or not, you can take a high resolution PDF that was created for printing and export it from Acrobat Pro (not Reader) as a low resolution PDF. Alternatively, you can export from a PDF to a JPG, PNG, or TIF image of the PDF at any resolution you want. I can also size the printer-ready PDF on my screen to whatever size I need and then just do a screen capture and paste the screen image into an email. Lots of ways to get from a PDF to what you need from a PDF. Any of these ways will preserve the layout with all its text and graphics. PDFs are incredibly flexible and useful in so many ways that they've become the core of my creative output.

In short, the three-step workflow is:

1. Lightroom/Photoshop (images)
2. InDesign (design and layout)
3. PDF (printing, repurposing, and archiving)

It's a workflow that fills every need I have at every level — allows unlimited image control and creativity including non-destructive preservation of my image originals, provides flexibility in repurposing at every step along the way, enables easy archive paths, facilitates staff sharing and workflow simplicity, and allows me to concentrate my energies on the creative process rather than the technical hoop jumping. Not a bad payoff for graduating from the initial learning curve.

Why not print from Photoshop?

Brooks,
You indicate you are using the Epson printer drivers yet everything I have read says to ignore the printer drivers and use Photoshop to manage settings? Also, are you outputting your PDF as grayscale or as a RGB file? Last - does a PDF format have a advantage for printing over a say a TIF?

— Dieter Wilkinson

   

First, printing out of Acrobat allows us to create layouts from InDesign that include, for example, text and crop marks. Sure, this can be done in Photoshop, but Photoshop's text capabilities are quite primitive compared to a dedicated layout software like InDesign.

Everything we do that ends up being printed in-house (on our Epson printers) or produced as a PDF is done in RGB mode, mostly using layered PSD image files or flattened JPEG files. The magazine is all duotone PSDs. I stopped using grayscale files years ago, even for b/w images. I like a little warm-toning in my "monochrome" images, so RGB is the only way to go. There are folks who prefer LAB, but I haven't seen any advantages to it that are visible in the printed output.

I've never printed out of Photoshop and can't see any reason why it would provide an advantage for my work. Even when it comes to printing simply utilitarian devices like contact sheets, I use InDesign to create the layouts and then print directly from InDesign or more typically go through PDFs. Printing individual images without text is still better from InDesign because it is so darned easy to get the image on the page in exactly the position you want.

I'm not positive about this, but I seem to remember that a lot of folks advise by-passing the printer driver so a custom ICC profile can be used with Photoshop in charge. If you need to do that, you can employ a custom profile printing out of InDesign or Acrobat, too, should you need to. We've never found it necessary, as I wrote in an earlier post.

I sometimes hear that people are hesitant to use PDFs because they think printing directly from Photoshop somehow is better because it "closer to the source." Keep in mind that virtually every sophisticated commercial printer is now using an Acrobat workflow, so it's not a compromise in quality. In fact, just the opposite; it's the way most professionals are working these days. Once you get used to it and have some InDesign export presets handy for your particular workflow, it beats Photoshop or Lightroom printing hands down.

Print engine

Hello Brooks,
You state that you use Epson Printer to produce the Folio images. What print driver do you use? The Epson print engine or a RIP? If it is a RIP which one?

— Vartkes Peltekoglu

   

For quite a long time I used Quadtone RIP and found it to be excellent. When we purchased the Epson 4880 printers, we found they included the so-called "Advanced Blank and White Mode" printing option that resolved the metachromatism problem just as well as QTR had done. It was a lot easier, too. I did an afternoon's worth of experimenting to find the setting on the ABW color wheel that created the warm-toned image I like and we were set.

So, in an abbreviated fashion, here are my steps when printing . . .

1. Do all the finish work to the image in either Lightroom (or Photoshop, if necessary) — sharpening, tonal adjustments, cropping, etc. Standard "darkroom" stuff. These are RGB files.
2. Import the image into an InDesign layout where I can add text and crop marks as necessary.
3. Export the layout from InDesign to a PDF file. This is our "master" and we archive these.
4. Print the master from a laptop that is attached to our network and uses the simple Acrobat Reader. Open the file in Acrobat Reader and print using one of our saved printer presets (for paper, dimensions, any toning variations, etc. in the Epson print driver).

That's it. Nothing fancier than that.

I have an interesting story to add. Huntington Witherill was visiting us a couple of years ago when we were getting ready to offer his LensWork Folio of color images called Improvisations. He had with him copies of his master PSD files that he had spent months dialing in perfectly, fussing with custom printer profiles, and calibrating his system to the nth degree. Simply as a starting point, we loaded his PSD files into an InDesign document, exported a PDF using Adobe RGB 1998 as the destination profile and printed two test prints of each image. The first test print was printed with the Epson printer driver using the Adobe RGB 1998 profile. The second test print was printed with the Epson printer drive using the Epson Standard profile. We assumed these would be off and feared a long challenge to create our own custom printer profiles so we could match his prints as close as possible. The Adobe RGB 1998 test prints were darned close — so close, in fact, that Hunter said he'd be happy with the results even though they weren't an exact match for his meticulously calibrated system master prints. Then we looked at the test prints made with the Epson Standard profile and were flabbergasted. They were an EXACT match for his master prints. We measured with a densitometer and they were spot on up and down the spectrum. No custom profiles, no special adjustment curves, no fuss, no drips, no errors. We've stuck with the Epson Standard profile on all the color work we've done and in each case the photographer has been very happy with our prints using their unadjusted files. Quite frankly, it couldn't be easier! I almost feel guilty. Almost.

Welcome to the LensWork Technology Blog

As you long-time readers of LensWork are fully aware, we tend to concentrate on the artmaking side of photography and the creative process rather than on technology, cameras, or equipment. But, truth be known, as photographers our productive life is very involved with technology. Without cameras, lenses, equipment of all sorts — and now computers, software, email, websites, etc. — our life as creative photographers would be pretty difficult.

Well, after 17 years of publishing LensWork and LensWork Extended without technology discussions, we're comfortable adding such to our repertoire with this blog. 

But with a twist.

It seems self-evident that here in the new millennium "technology" for photographers is much broader thing than merely cameras or other photographic equipment. We've specifically titled this The LensWork Technology Blog for a reason — so we are free to discuss software, computers, PDF publishing, print and book publishing, ebooks, digital printing, folios, website design and marketing, special edition prints and folios, and even blogging itself — that encompass such a variety of skills and tools so important to photography and the creative process to modern fine art photographers. To limit the discussion to just cameras and lenses seems more an anachronism than a useful strategy.

So, in this blog I'll share with you my random collection of thoughts, discoveries, explorations, hard-won experience, and — I fully anticipate — some technological failures and struggles as I wade through this world of technology and its use to create photographic artwork.

I'm particularly excited about the technology of blogging because it offers, almost for the first time in my publishing history, a fully integrated platform that allows an exchange of ideas with LensWork readers and between our readers. Since 2004, we published one of the most popular podcasts about photography on the Internet. To date, there are about 600 podcast episodes available on our LensWork website in which I discuss various aspects of photography and creative process. (Consider yourself invited.) I love doing these podcasts and will continue them in addition to these new blogs. Podcasts however, by their nature, are a one-way street and blogging offers a different opportunity that allows not just a two-way street but also cross-traffic that opens all kinds of lines of communication that further the notion of a community of photographers who share a passion for photographs, the creative process, and the technology required to produce them. I tend to think of LensWork readers as a community and I love the idea that the community, from around the globe, can find each other through these new LensWork blogs.

By the way, I use the term "blogs" (plural) because we're launching three blogs simultaneously, each with a specific focus and purpose —

• this blog on technology,
• another we're titling Ask Brooks in which I'll do my best to respond to questions from our readers (or help them search for answers to their questions within the community of other photographers who follow the blog),
• and finally a sort of relaunch of LensWork Vision of the Heart. Version 1.0 of Vision of the Heart was a podcast-format production that offered commentary on photographs we'd published in LensWork or LensWork Extended. As such, it was intended to be a discussion of images (rather than either creativity or equipment) and was one of my favorite projects for the last few years on our LensWork website. Unfortunately, as a podcast it was simply too cumbersome to produce and bogged down in its own logistics. The blog format, however, is ideally suited for this project so we are relaunching it using blogging rather than audio as the platform. This also will allow you, the LensWork community again, to add your comments and join the conversation.

So, here we go! Welcome aboard.