C printing with colorblindness

[nickstreme]

I have been told that it would be way to hard for me to get good looking C prints because i am moderatley colorblind. Do you guys totally agree, or what?

 

[Photo Engineer]

Yes, we have tested this in KRL and it is more difficult, but often depends on the print and the nature of the color blindness.

PE

 

[dpurdy]

If you print to satisfy yourself, then you satisfy yourself. It might be a point of interest. Making color prints for other people, which I do a lot, can be really difficult even with really good color vision, which I have. Viewing light source and even what you have eaten can affect how you see. Plus often you run across images of mixed light and color or film that just won't balance out right. So a lot of times color balance boils down to a matter of opinion of how you want it to look. If you like color prints with your slight color blindness, then make prints you like.
Dennis

 

[mtjade2007]

I don't have good color vision myself as very often my prints are told by others, including my wife, that it's a little too this color or too that color, etc. Sometimes I got very frustrated. I have collected a few old used Macbeth reflection densitometers. Although I have not figured out how to put them to use to help me. But I am sure it's a tool that can help to produce a better skin tone, neutral shadow, blue sky, etc. If you use Photoshop it also has a few tools that can be really helpful. One that I use a lot is called color sampler tool. Open the image file by Photoshop. Select the color sampler tool then click on a spot on the image. It will tell you the RGB (or CMYK) values of that spot. If you can't judge the color by eyes you may be able to judge by the RGB numbers.

When my negatives have color crossover problems I use this tool and do my best to balance the colors. I don't think it can fully correct the color crossover problems but it helps.

 

[nickandre]

All you need to do is detect if there are any other colors in the greys and compensate. If worse comes to worse you can have someone help you. Also, try using print viewing filters. You can tell if grey is grey, right? Plus color blindness won't deter you from shooting, as anyone can recognize a good sunset.

I met a colorblind photographer. His work was quite good. He did use digital tho...

Generally I don't think you'll have to adjust very much for C printing.

 

[Photo Engineer]

The problem is that many colorblind people cannot tell if grey is grey!

All Kodak people take a colorblindness test before final assignment, just for safety reasons if not for anything else. The colorblind often have difficulty in a darkroom due to the color of some safelights and the hearing impaired often also have problems in darkrooms.

But color blindness is a disqualification at Kodak for evaluating and working with color materials. This is unfortunate but true.

PE

 

[analogsnob]

Since I assume we are not talking about printing professionally here there are strategies that make making an acceptable print possible.

If you photograph a Kodak grey card ( or other objective standard) in the beginning of each roll or at the beginning of every different lighting arrangement start printing with the grey card negative and balance to grey with a densitometer ( equal density readings +/- .03 or so for each color means grey) Replace the grey card neg with another of the same batch and you should be very close. You will not be able to fine toon color but the prints you make should be the equivalent of machine prints (with the advantage of your density tweak and any burning/ dodging you wish).

Its not as efficient as if you weren't color blind and there are things you won't be able to print. I would have a reliable friend with good eyes check you if there's money involved but you can print for yourself. A similar strategy should work in photoshop too.

 

[mtjade2007]

In my opinion colors can be be a very subjective matter. If you ask two individuals their opinions of the colors of a print you will hear two different answers. So try to find one, not more, person to do this color evaluation for you. A color reflection densitometer can be such a person (an electronic one) for the purpose.

 

[2F/2F]

What you have to do is get really good at explaining what you want to an assistant, whose observation you trust, and who can be there with you when you are printing. Then you can do it. Kind of a hassle, but may still be better than having a lab do it.

 

[benjiboy]

I found out I had a colour blindness problem with green and brown while having the release medical before leaving the military a long time ago, so if I shoot colour I tend to shoot slides, and if I need negs for C41 prints, I get them done at a local pro lab whose work I have always been satisfied with, and rely on them.

 

[Mike Wilde]

I hate to suggest throwing technolgy at this issue, but I myself do. I find am not always overly sensitive to subtle colour casts under artificial light of any kind, even with the aid of print viewing filters. I always print late at night, and have found the next morning under sunlight that all the prints from the provious nights session too one way in the morning. Somes days it was red, other days blue, etc. My colour printing also happens sporadically, like 3-4 days in a row, and then maybe a few months until the next session.

I bought a colorstar3000 analyser. Problem is now solved, and I am in Heaven.

Now I print my 'betty' neg (my wife holding a colour card and a grey card outside with a snowbank as a background) first thing for a session. Process and dry it; a 4x5 print works fine.
Zero the filters out of the light souce, and with no neg in the carrier, measure the transmission property of the paper in denistimeter mode. Push one button to zero the alnlyser, then measure the grey card.

If Y, M &C are close to each other, then have the analsyer adjust a master parameter applied to all channels to make the correction to make the next print it analyses on grey print as grey. If they are not close, ususlly the analyser suggests the direction to go in. A ring around chart, sich as printed in old colour dataguides helps here as well.

Now you are set. The green grass channel will print green grass, the blue sky channel, the warm caucasian skin channel, the neutral caucasian skin channle etc.

Want to change to a different lot of paper - ok. Print one more 'Betty' for it, and you are back in business, with new analyser master settings aligned to suit its characteristics.

 

[Bob F.]

Being somewhat colour-blind myself, the problem I find is not so much detecting that there is a colour-bias but figuring out what colour it is!

However, this is where my colour densitometer comes in handy (knew I'd find a use for it eventually...). Assuming I will have the same kind of lighting on a roll of film (I use 120 mainly so it is generally true in my case) I include a grey-card in the first image of a roll. I can then print and use the grey-card in the print to zero out the colour bias.

Another option that may work for you is to use viewing filters. Again, I can usually tell when there is a neutral grey or white but it takes a lot more hit & miss trials with filter combinations than it would take someone with good colour vision.

Perhaps a scanner might replace the densitometer (though you might need to find some way to calibrate it).