Digital Negatives with a red tone

[bryans_tx]

Some many years back, in Photo class, we learned a digital negative on Ink Jet that used red-tones. All I see on you tube are grayscale - B/W.

May I ask what you all might know concerning this ?
I have tried contacting the teacher without a lot of luck.

thanks very much!

 

[mshchem]

I seem to recall seeing colors (green??) in inkjet negatives used for salt prints.

 

[BigStinkyBean]

I don't remember the video but I think I've seen orange negatives on YouTube used for cyanotype. I think the creator of the video said color doesn't matter, it was just a convenient color to use for whatever reason. As long as the ink blocks light it shouldn't really matter the color as far as I'm aware. I would be curious to see what someone with more experience would have to say on the subject though!

 

[koraks]

There are several "how to" guides out there on making digital negatives. Some of these go a first step of determining the blocking power of the different inks used. The QTR-based approach that's advocates by e.g. Sandy King et al. is one of them. You basically print a number of colored gradients, one for each individual ink, then print those with the target process and assess the results for the desired blocking power.

Red as such is a bit of an unlikely color to come up since many printers don't print red ink (newer ones sometimes do), and when it comes to IV blocking power, it's usually black and yellow inks that perform the best. As a result, you tend to get a lot of yellowish looking negatives in the alt process corner. Red would imply yellow and magenta are used, which generally isn't all that beneficial compared to just yellow (black is generally in the mix by default, since it's nearly always a good UV blocker).

 

[Andrew Keedle]

See http://www.easydigitalnegatives.com/color-blocker/ for some details

 

[nmp]

Surprisingly, correlation between color and blocking power is not as logical as one would think. It is very specific to the printer and inks it is using. In my old HP B9180, green was decidedly the best blocking color. Seems adding cyan/blue to yellow increased the UV opacity from that the latter alone would give, which is counter-intuitive. I just checked my negatives printed by Dan Burkholder on an Epson (don't remember which one) in one of his Formulary workshops that I took and it is greenish. He was the first one to use colorized negatives, I think. I believe some of the early dye based printers (like Epson 1280) did have red as the best blocking color. I remember seeing an early article - don't recall by whom.

Nowadays when you see generally B&W negatives, it is because in the newer printers, the black (PK and MK) densities have improved significantly that they do pretty good job of blocking UV for pretty much all alt processes. In higher end-Epsons, in addition, there is a facility to dial in more than 100% ink, if further density is required. Older printers didn't do adequate job with black only inks so people had to resort to finding a combination of other inks that displayed greater UV opacity.

What I would recommend is first print a step-wedge using your normal black ink and see if the density is adequate to get you a paper white (or near) step 0 using your standard printing time. If that's the case, and it might be depending on the process (cyanotypes for example don't require the density that a salt print would,) you are good to go. If not, first see if you can increase the ink load within the printer driver itself and test again. Or use MK, which generally has a higher UV density. You might have to get one of the more expensive transparencies (like Pictorico Ultra Premium) to handle those two options. If that does not do the job, then go the colorized negative route using the Peter Mrhar's approach as linked by @Andrew Keedle and see if there is a non-black color in the palette that has higher UV opacity. Finally, if your printer allows use of QTRip (meaning its one of the supported Epsons) which can control both individual inks and their loading to find the best combination - but that is much more involved with steep learning curve (personal experience) so I would use it only if all else fails.

:Niranjan.

 

[jeffreyg]

I have used several different methods for platinum/palladium printing and really haven’t found one to be better than another. X-ray duplicating film (grayscale), 4x5 HP5 in D76 also PMK Pyro, Pictorico Premium with Epson inks and also with the appearance of PMK Pyro as well as having a yellow tint. All produced similar results. My opinion is to do what suits you and get results you are pleased with. Now I mainly use the Pictorico with the b&w negative printed as a rgb file. After a test print I can quickly tweak if necessary and make a new version.

 

[bryans_tx]

There are several "how to" guides out there on making digital negatives. Some of these go a first step of determining the blocking power of the different inks used. The QTR-based approach that's advocates by e.g. Sandy King et al. is one of them. You basically print a number of colored gradients, one for each individual ink, then print those with the target process and assess the results for the desired blocking power.

Red as such is a bit of an unlikely color to come up since many printers don't print red ink (newer ones sometimes do), and when it comes to IV blocking power, it's usually black and yellow inks that perform the best. As a result, you tend to get a lot of yellowish looking negatives in the alt process corner. Red would imply yellow and magenta are used, which generally isn't all that beneficial compared to just yellow (black is generally in the mix by default, since it's nearly always a good UV blocker).

It was most likely Magenta, I used Red perhaps incorrectly. I sent an email to the instructor, Elizabeth Mellot at the college...

 

[bryans_tx]

Surprisingly, correlation between color and blocking power is not as logical as one would think. It is very specific to the printer and inks it is using. In my old HP B9180, green was decidedly the best blocking color. Seems adding cyan/blue to yellow increased the UV opacity from that the latter alone would give, which is counter-intuitive. I just checked my negatives printed by Dan Burkholder on an Epson (don't remember which one) in one of his Formulary workshops that I took and it is greenish. He was the first one to use colorized negatives, I think. I believe some of the early dye based printers (like Epson 1280) did have red as the best blocking color. I remember seeing an early article - don't recall by whom.

Nowadays when you see generally B&W negatives, it is because in the newer printers, the black (PK and MK) densities have improved significantly that they do pretty good job of blocking UV for pretty much all alt processes. In higher end-Epsons, in addition, there is a facility to dial in more than 100% ink, if further density is required. Older printers didn't do adequate job with black only inks so people had to resort to finding a combination of other inks that displayed greater UV opacity.

What I would recommend is first print a step-wedge using your normal black ink and see if the density is adequate to get you a paper white (or near) step 0 using your standard printing time. If that's the case, and it might be depending on the process (cyanotypes for example don't require the density that a salt print would,) you are good to go. If not, first see if you can increase the ink load within the printer driver itself and test again. Or use MK, which generally has a higher UV density. You might have to get one of the more expensive transparencies (like Pictorico Ultra Premium) to handle those two options. If that does not do the job, then go the colorized negative route using the Peter Mrhar's approach as linked by @Andrew Keedle and see if there is a non-black color in the palette that has higher UV opacity. Finally, if your printer allows use of QTRip (meaning its one of the supported Epsons) which can control both individual inks and their loading to find the best combination - but that is much more involved with steep learning curve (personal experience) so I would use it only if all else fails.

:Niranjan.

And Indeed this was intended for use with the School's R1800 printers!
I am copy and paste your reply to a document, thank you kindly!

 

[bryans_tx]

My Printer does have density adjustment

 

[bryans_tx]

checking out, reading the color blocker. Once again the work and brains of the community at large is so significant!

 

[bryans_tx]

Sweet my GF just ordered me two of Mhars books.

 

[fgorga]

The color of ink has little to do with its opacity in the UV.

(If I still had access to a lab, I could prepare a solution that is transparent and colorless to the human eye and, at the same time, is completely opaque in the UV.)

Thus, one needs to determine which color in any ink set has the highest opacity in the UV by experiment. You do this by preparing a file consisting of patches of different colors and printing this file onto transparency film as you would a negative. Make a print using the desired alt process chemistry using the transparency and see which color gives the lightest hue in your print.

The ideal color will likely vary somewhat with the alt process used, but I would expect that all of the iron-based processes could use the same hue. Similarly, any process where silver is directly photo-reduced could use the same hue but that that hue would likely be different from the best one for the iron-based processes.

Dan Burkholder wrote an article about this topic which appeared in the July 2008 issue of Photo Techniques magazine. Send me a PM and I can provide access to a copy of this article if needed.

Having said all of that, personally, I currently print negatives (as RGB files) using the matte black ink of a Epson P800. I have used this approach for a long time, back to the era of the 3800.

 

[bryans_tx]

Wow I’m lucky lol, gf got me 4 books, three of Mhars, and a Christina Anderson !
And off topic , a C41 kit !

 

[koraks]

She's a keeper!!

 

[bryans_tx]

Yes! She’s actually my ex lol.

 

[koraks]

It's probably better to have a friendly ex than a vicious girlfriend

 

[Alan9940]

You may have seen digital negatives produced via the Precision Digital Negatives System created by Mark Nelson. See: https://www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com/ One of steps involved (and there are quite a few) is to determine which color blocks the most UV light. I don't remember which printers I had at the time, but one printer needed to generate a green negative, while a different printer was orange. Mark's system is very comprehensive and can generate great digital negatives, but I don't think it's particularly popular nowadays with so many other choices available.

 

[bryans_tx]

I will take a look at it. It is now seemingly easy to get info overload. lol

 

[bryans_tx]

Oh I experienced the vicious crazy.. never again!

 

[tnp651]

The print dialog has changed and no longer shows Print Settings > Color Matching or Print Settings > Printer Settings. There's no way to get to Advanced Color Settings which allowed adding a color tint to prints. Does anyone have a solution?

 

[fgorga]

The print dialog has changed and no longer shows Print Settings > Color Matching or Print Settings > Printer Settings. There's no way to get to Advanced Color Settings which allowed adding a color tint to prints. Does anyone have a solution?

Mac or PC? From the info you supplied, I am guessing Mac, if not ignore the next sentence or two.

Are you sure that you have the full driver, direct from Epson (another guess) and not the dumbed down AirPrint driver from Apple? In my experience (helping others with Macs, I am primary a Windows user) this is often the cause of missing features when going to print.

 

[tnp651]

Mac or PC? From the info you supplied, I am guessing Mac, if not ignore the next sentence or two.

Are you sure that you have the full driver, direct from Epson (another guess) and not the dumbed down AirPrint driver from Apple? In my experience (helping others with Macs, I am primary a Windows user) this is often the cause of missing features when going to print.

Hi Frank,
Yes, I'm using a Mac with OS13.5 and installed the current Epson SCP700_Lite_64NR_NA for drivers and software. I tried to install firmware 04.50KH24L5 and got the message "Downgraded (it cannot be updated)." I guess that means I have the current firmware for the P700. I disconnected the USB cable and the print dialog says "not connected" so it's not an AirPrint problem. I'll try calling Epson and will report what I learn.