Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/10/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]The Epson printer interface is excellent. I love working with it. I'd hate not to be having it be in effect set on "auto". I use it to help me print my pictures which is set at "Printer manages colors" when as I read it I'm afraid I'm thinking that it is "me" who is the printer they are talking about. Not the machine on the table. But whatever. This is how I've worked for a decade now. Its how all the prints I've made got there. I don't think I ever made a print with the other setting. I'll set my camera to "p" but not my printer. My printer I set to "me". The idea of dozens of my prints could be printed automatically hands off while I'm off maybe doing something else I find unnerving. When I got back from the movies and looked at that thick stack of auto prints would I be proud of them? How many would I want to redo and would I bother? This has always been my position and "workflow" and Brian and my many friends on the list are aware of it. And many have seen my prints. They say good things abut them in front of my back behind my back who knows? The thing about prints though is they are not theoretical not rhetorical. They are results. Hand copy. The end. And how they got there is really besides the point you are holding them in your own two hands and looking at them and either they hold up or they don't. So if you got yours on automatic pilot and I'm looking at them and liking them then good for you! I'm sure that will happen and probably has. I will say than many or most of the prints I've seen printed on auto pilot have looked that way. The "craft" aspect of them has been low to non existent. People with darkroom experience especially if they've taken classes or are well read or even just plain experienced knows what "craft" means in their print making. It doesn't mean "set it and forget it". What it means is a very hands on back and forth trial and arrow "crafting" of an image. And its a thing few people who get darkrooms going ever find themselves having the patience for. Most take the first thing out. I do remember the first days of this new thing called the "Xerox" machine and there were three buttons on it. One was auto sharp setting. There was one guy who really knew when to use that other setting/s and when to not/ hit that button. He was the master. The rest of us had to look at the prints we got and decide which ones would be improved by running it thought again with the extra sharp button. With a lot of the prints I see, the inkjets with the profiles which really are in effect auto pilot we don't even get that. They are in effect dumber then Xeroxes. There is no accountability. As the print has to be perfect because all the settings were perfect. Supposedly. And to me many of them have looked like it. Auto prints. The reason being a monitor is a monitor not a test print. The monitor tells you what it looks like in a monitor. A print tells you what it looks like as a print. You look at that test critically. Then you make choices and decisions. And you try again. Rinse and repeat until you like it. And if you do that your print will look like it. It will have some degree of "craft". This is all I've ever known about printing. -------------------- Mark William Rabiner Photography http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/ mark at rabinergroup.com > > PS: I use profiles for everything. Maybe I should try it with "Printer > manages > colors" and see if that is any better. It's hard to be any worse. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information