MY TWO CENTS

I suppose the first order of business is to separate the facts from the b-ll. s--t, and is there a lot of it when it come to digital photography. It's neither magical nor mystical. It's nothing more than understanding the workflow from the time you click the shutter to the final print. Now, that sounds easy doesn't it? Well, IT IS!!

OK, let's put thing in prospective. We'll start with a computer, printer, scanner or digital camera. We may not need either the scanner or, most certainly, the digital camera. Our computer doesn't have to be the newest state-of-the-art, rip roaring fastest buckle your seat belt machine. It has to be a Macintosh . . . ONLY KIDDING, SO HELP ME; I'M JUST JOKING. (Although, it would be nice). Anyway, the computer should have 256mg of ram (memory and be no less than 300mghz in speed. Other wise, if you image is fairly large it will be a career until it opens and reacts to your each and every move. You don't have to buy a new one if yours isn't meeting the bill. Take advantage of upgrades. It's a heck of a lot cheaper. Oh well, its only money!

Your printer probably is an Epson. They control about 90% of the market. However, remember they are in the ink and paper business first and foremost. The printer has a built in generic profile that's dedicated to Epson inks and Epson papers. By generic, I mean that if you have, say, an Epson 3000, the built in profile is the same of every Epson 3000 ever built. It's the profile that is the calibration that says what you see on your screen is what will be printed. Oh yeah!!?? You see the printer, scanner and computer are calibrated to each other, as in a circle. You calibrate your monitor using software, i.e. Colorblind and a puck (a devise that stick on the screen of the monitor.) There are several companies provide that ability. One that you'll hear me mention quite often is profilecity.com. No, I don't have stock in them nor am I a partner. In my opinion, I think they do an outstanding job. Ok, we have calibrated the monitor. It is a very easy procedure. Just follow the steps on the screen, It's that simple.

Now we have to calibrate the printer. Oh God help me. I don't know about your relationship with God, so I'll help you. If you follow my directions, it will be the easiest thing to do. A profile is needed for every printer, ink and paper combination you use. Think of that, every printer, ink and paper combination you use. How many printers do you use, one? How many different types of inks do you use, one? Yeah, but you've read all about archival quality. Especially in pigment inks. I mean pigment sounds just like the inks painters use, and they last for centuries. Without getting into the minutia of it, I'm going to tell to that pigment inks fade at the same rate indoors as they do outdoors. I know the hype. But this is one of those separate the separate the b-ll. that I alluded too earlier. In subsequent articles, I'll delve right into the meat of archival ratings. However, you may use several different papers, say, six. That's a lot of papers. But you have read about the different papers available and you feel that they would really enhance your images. You're probably right. You've read about the wide gamut of Lysonic inks and the presentation offered using Hahnemuhle papers and you want to you them on your printer. You'd be absolutely correct in your decision. (Disclosure: Blue Heron Editions is the beta-testing site for Lyson. So kill me.) I'm only telling you what I know to be true. There are other inks and a whole slew of papers out there. You should never be held hostage to only one brand of ink and papers, never, ever. Even if you decide to stay with Epson products, I mentioned that their profile is generic, not for YOUR printer. Therefore custom profiles would be in order. OK,OK enough already, how do I make profiles. There is software and hardware on the market that range from approximately $800 to $50,000. Plus there is an education on color management that must be learned as well. I told you if you followed my instructions, nothing would be easier. Go on the Internet to. Here it comes, profilecity.com. They will produce perfect profiles for you. They own the extremely expensive hardware and they are color management experts. So for about $100 per, you can get as many profiles as you wish. Now was that easy or what?

There has to be a way of getting your images into the computer. They might be on a CD-ROM, Zip disk as a digital file. They get on those devices because a Service Lab scanned them and put them there or, your photo processor placed them on a Photo CD. The other way is to scan them yourself. Did you ever hear someone moan, "I hate scanning?" Want to know why they hate it? Because they really don't know how to do it. I'll devote an entire article, in the near future, just to that subject. The scanner also has to be calibrated. Now that depends on the type of scanner you own. The optical resolution and the D-Max of the scanner are the important numbers. If you see a scanner on sale for $149.95, that's just what you're getting. Not much. A scanner can run from $1,600 to $75,000. For the average bear, the scanners in the $1,600 to $2,100 ranges will be terrific. Remember the scanner is an input devise. Ever hear, Garbage In . . Garbage Out. Think of it. The scanner manufacturers offer different software's that do a great job, not only in calibration, but also, in the scanning process.. Plus another fantastic program for calibrating your scanner is (here I go again) profilecity.com. If your input is a digital camera, that too should be calibrated. Here's a test. Guess who has a program for that?

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