Re: fine art reproduction questions
Re: fine art reproduction questions
- Subject: Re: fine art reproduction questions
- From: Ben Goren <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 13:44:07 -0700
On 2010 May 2, at 12:46 PM, Randy Zaucha wrote:
> Hi Ben,I was employed by Thom Kinkade for 2 1/2 years to accurately reproduce his paintings for mass distribution.
Sounds like a fun job!
> I've seen more cottages and lighthouses than any man should ever see.
...or maybe not....
> I'm not sure what you meant about not being able to use Betterlight due to floors.
I don't remember typing anything like that. I will state though, that the Betterlight gear is out of my league. I'm afraid budgetary constraints will keep me kluging away with the amateur equipment for...oh, probably the rest of my life, barring any lottery tickets falling into my lap.
> The wild card is being able to make a good profile of the camera.
Of that I am utterly, thoroughly convinced. It's my knowledge and skill in building profiles that has had, far and away, the biggest improvement on my results. I'm sure I could do better work with what I know now using a high-end consumer digicam and open shade than I ever would have been able to when I first started had you turned me loose in your studio without instruction.
> HP actually profiled our camera using RGB lights. After exposure I took physical readings with a spectrophotometer from the painting and they were added to the final calculation of the image file. I'm not sure if they ever put that product on the market. Robin?
I've yet to experiment with this, but I'm pretty sure you could do this with Argyll by adding the various measurements to the appropriate chart reference and measurement files.
> Once Thom brought back 6 paintings he made on a trip to Israel. He had purchased some paints made locally and they reproduced very differently than what we were used to. That batch took some extra retouching to get a good match. We attributed it to local minerals in the paint.
I'll keep that in mind, though I don't expect to run into anything especially exotic any time soon.
> If you can, get your painter to make a simulation of the Gretag Colorchecker with his paints. Measure it and make a camera profile. That may get you some better accuracy. Be sure to make at least 5 reading per patch and average them.
Now *that* is an excellent suggestion. The next time I have somebody dissatisfied with the results -- especially after I've finished making my overly-complex chart -- I'll do just that. Thanks!
> We were very proud to make extremely accurate reproductions of Kinkade's paintings. The irony was that Thom's older paintings from the 80's were reproduced for offset press. Whoever was doing the color check on press got subjective and told the pressman to go away from the color of the original. They even dot etched the color to the detriment of the color match. Original and reproduction turned out very different and they sell them to this day. The new giclees of his work are extremely accurate reproductions.
The fact that the inaccurate old ones still sell very well is good to remind me that I should strive for perfection but not let my shortcomings keep me from sleeping at night. Each job I've done has been better than the previous, but, fortunately, they've all been ``good enough'' so far for the artists' purposes. And dramatically better than what they've been able to do themselves.
> Fine art reproduction always involves retouching because the camera will never see color like the eye does.
I agree...but I'm still at the point where improving the profile has better bang for the buck than retouching. At least, I've revisited some of my mom's works that I shot some time ago that I did extensive retouching on, and I can get better results now from the same files by building better profiles (etc.). And I know a lot of shortcomings in my workflow that I'm working on addressing; when I run out of ways to improve that, I'll start to focus my attention again on retouching.
> A great camera profile and Equalight 2 can get you about 90% of the way. I set up a local company with those tools and they have youngsters making very accurate painting reproductions on the first print off an HP Z6100 printer.
> Monitors...get one with contrast, brightness and individual RGB brightness controls. Then profile it. I use the Spyder 3 Pro at 2.4 Native white point setting.
I'm using an iMac 27", profiled with an i1 Pro. I know there are better options out there, but there are more important things right now for me to be spending my photographic budget on.
The printer is a Canon iPF8100, and I couldn't be happier with it.
Cheers,
b&
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