First time Pt/Pd (with HP 9180)

This is my first post in this forum.

I have long been interested in the idea of making Pt/Pd prints, originally from 4x5 negatives and more recently from digital negatives. A few years ago I got very serious about the idea - and read up on the Burkholder technique with the hope of using my old Epson 1200. However, I never got around to trying it.

Since then I have purchased an HP 9180 and plan to use that for my first experiments.

I want to keep things simple to start with - not having ever made a Pt/Pd print - and then add complexity where and when I can appreciate its value. To that end I have a plan in mind that I'd love to get feedback on from all of you with experience in this area. I will be using digital originals for my source material.

Based on a number of posts by Sandy King I was thinking of starting with composite black on the 9180 by simply printing a desaturated RGB file. That would allow me to skip the whole color selection process and jump straight to creating the adjustment curve - which I would do using a 101 step wedge and the manual method described in the RNP system here - Dead Link Removed.

I only have PS7 and so can't take advantage of ChartThrob here.

Having built the curve I will then start making and printing negatives and see what I get.

One question I have: I think I would like to start with Pt/Pd (from B&S) - should I try the Na2 solutions? Can anyone suggest what would be a good cotrast to use for composite black negs from a 9180?

At some point I would like to get more sophisticated - I may explore RNP-arrays and PDN in more detail once I get a grounding.

Any suggestions or comments on the above approach to getting started would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Richard Webber

H Richard and welcome to the forum.

I use the 9180 and have used composite black to print digital negatives for kallitypes but have found the curve non linear in areas, which can be kind of frustrating. I had initially planned to go this route (I have PS6) but after reading over Michael's site, decided to jump straight in with the RNP array and it was pretty great. I was getting decent results the same day and after that it was only a matter of refining the color, which he also goes over on his site.

Since I have tried composite black just for comparison and ran into problems with the high density areas of the negative, they seemed to reverse around 94-96% density of my homemade 101 step wedge. Maybe you'll have better luck with it.

Anyway, I hope some of my experiences are of some use, but please don't take me as an authority on any of this. Colin

Richard,

If you have never before printed pt./pd. I would recommend that you buy a Stouffers TP45 step wedge, either 21 or 31 steps, and print with it first before trying to make digital negatives. The step wedges provide a constant as to negative density and you can quickly learn the exact exposure scale of your chemistry and paper. Having this experience will give you the knowledge to better understand your digital negatives when you get to that point. I still make a lot of use of step wedges as a check on paper and chemistry.

Using composite black should work fine with the 9180. Make sure that you have your working space set to grayscale 2.2. The mode of your file should be grayscale, and you want to print with gray inks only. This will give Dmax of about log 2.8 UV, and a DR of about 2.6, which should be about right for pure palladium. My recommendation would be to avoid the use of contrast controls and plan to incorporate this into the curve.

Sandy King

sanking said:

Using composite black should work fine with the 9180. Make sure that you have your working space set to grayscale 2.2. The mode of your file should be grayscale, and you want to print with gray inks only. This will give Dmax of about log 2.8 UV, and a DR of about 2.6, which should be about right for pure palladium. My recommendation would be to avoid the use of contrast controls and plan to incorporate this into the curve.

Sandy King

Click to expand...

I'll have to try this method. I had been desaturating and printing in color, and varying the RGB values to tweak the density.

sanking said:

Richard,

... Make sure that you have your working space set to grayscale 2.2. ...

Click to expand...

Realistically, the color space makes no difference in this procedure. The value of the color space is in working with a standardized monitor and computer (calibrated). It has no bearing on the results that will be produced by a digital negative.

Actually, I believe that a gray LAB color space willl be much more intuitive for many people, because the values in the file can be related directly to the percentage values in the print later on, especially if the calibration is done using a reflection densitometer.

Either way, though, it makes no difference in the negative calibration procedure, or in the success of the negative calibration.


---Michael

Colin Graham said:

H Richard and welcome to the forum.

I use the 9180 and have used composite black to print digital negatives for kallitypes but have found the curve non linear in areas, which can be kind of frustrating. I had initially planned to go this route (I have PS6) but after reading over Michael's site, decided to jump straight in with the RNP array and it was pretty great. I was getting decent results the same day and after that it was only a matter of refining the color, which he also goes over on his site.

Since I have tried composite black just for comparison and ran into problems with the high density areas of the negative, they seemed to reverse around 94-96% density of my homemade 101 step wedge. Maybe you'll have better luck with it.

Anyway, I hope some of my experiences are of some use, but please don't take me as an authority on any of this. Colin

Click to expand...

It was great to get so many replies to my post so quickly - I certainly feel welcomed!

Colin - thanks for sharing your experiences. Out of curiosity - given that you have PS6 I take it you didn't use HeartThrob and so did everything manually? I might try composite black and then go RNP right away if I have curve issues (just as you did.)

Richard

sanking said:

Richard,

If you have never before printed pt./pd. I would recommend that you buy a Stouffers TP45 step wedge, either 21 or 31 steps, and print with it first before trying to make digital negatives. The step wedges provide a constant as to negative density and you can quickly learn the exact exposure scale of your chemistry and paper. Having this experience will give you the knowledge to better understand your digital negatives when you get to that point. I still make a lot of use of step wedges as a check on paper and chemistry.

Using composite black should work fine with the 9180. Make sure that you have your working space set to grayscale 2.2. The mode of your file should be grayscale, and you want to print with gray inks only. This will give Dmax of about log 2.8 UV, and a DR of about 2.6, which should be about right for pure palladium. My recommendation would be to avoid the use of contrast controls and plan to incorporate this into the curve.

Sandy King

Click to expand...

Sandy,

Thanks for the suggestions.

On the step wedge - yes, I had definitely intended to use it to determine the base exposure. I just omitted to mention that step for brevity. However, I assumed that doing any kind of contrast adjustments based on it wouldn't be worthwhile since it wasn't representative of the densities I would achieve with the digital negative. Is there more I should be doing with the Stouffer step wedge before going to calibration with the digital negative approach? Should it be used for me to get the contrast of my emulsion/paper combination close to correct?

I am a little confused about your last paragraph. I had understood from a previous post of yours that composite black meant printing a desaturated RGB image in color. I had assumed that the colored inks did a better job of absorbing UV than the grey ones. Can you advise?

Thanks again for the advice,

Richard

Richard,
The biggest problem I had was making a printable step wedge, which wasn't very hard at all- I just ended up filling each square individually with its K%, I couldnt get a smooth, accurate gradient with any of the PS filters I tried.

Entering the data for the curve was surprisingly easy and only a little mind-numbing, lol. Michael also has a great tutorial on his site for doing this. This is why I went ahead with the array- I figured if I was going to spend some time plotting curves, I may as well print the array out and have a color (red for my process) to compare with the composite black.

PS This is kind of sneaky but: If you try the free 30 day demo of CS3, that would probably give you plenty of time to run the curves with ChartThrob and test them for you process. I just thought of this the other day and kicked myself a little. But I'm glad I did it long hand, it gave me a better grasp on what I was trying to achieve.

Poliweb said:

Sandy,


I am a little confused about your last paragraph. I had understood from a previous post of yours that composite black meant printing a desaturated RGB image in color. I had assumed that the colored inks did a better job of absorbing UV than the grey ones. Can you advise?

Thanks again for the advice,

Richard

Click to expand...

Richard,

You can do it either way but I found that you get more UV blocking density with the 9180 by setting your color control to grayscale and the ink setting to gray inks only. I also set the ink density to 40% to reduce Dmax slightly. With these setting I get a maximum UV Dmax of 2.84, which with pictorico gives a final DR of about 2.6.

I am not currently using the 9180 for digital negatives. I bought it for that purpose, but then Clay posted a QTR profile for the 2200 that has worked great for me, and since I have a large supply of the FotoWarehouse OHP that works with the 2200 and not with the 9180 I have continued to use the 2200 for digital negatives. I print color and monochrome prints with the 9180, for which purpose it is much superior to the 2200 IMO.

Sandy

Poliweb said:

Sandy,

Is there more I should be doing with the Stouffer step wedge before going to calibration with the digital negative approach? Should it be used for me to get the contrast of my emulsion/paper combination close to correct?

Richard

Click to expand...

Richard,

My approach would be this.

1. Use the step wedge to fine tune your chemistry/paper ES. The step wedge is more useful to me in this context because it has known density values that correspond to 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments and you can learn a lot from it. Anytime my process gives me anomalous results with a digital negative I immediately check the results with a step wedge.

2. Second, once you get the ES nailed, determine what printer setting gives you the required Dmax for the process.

3. Third, make the curve correction.

Sandy

Colin Graham said:

Richard,
The biggest problem I had was making a printable step wedge, which wasn't very hard at all- I just ended up filling each square individually with its K%, I couldnt get a smooth, accurate gradient with any of the PS filters I tried.

Entering the data for the curve was surprisingly easy and only a little mind-numbing, lol. Michael also has a great tutorial on his site for doing this. This is why I went ahead with the array- I figured if I was going to spend some time plotting curves, I may as well print the array out and have a color (red for my process) to compare with the composite black.

PS This is kind of sneaky but: If you try the free 30 day demo of CS3, that would probably give you plenty of time to run the curves with ChartThrob and test them for you process. I just thought of this the other day and kicked myself a little. But I'm glad I did it long hand, it gave me a better grasp on what I was trying to achieve.

Click to expand...

Colin

Great suggestions - especially the one about the CS3 demo. If I like the whole process then it should be enough to convince me to upgrade.

Thanks

Richard

sanking said:

Richard,

My approach would be this.

1. Use the step wedge to fine tune your chemistry/paper ES. The step wedge is more useful to me in this context because it has known density values that correspond to 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments and you can learn a lot from it. Anytime my process gives me anomalous results with a digital negative I immediately check the results with a step wedge.

2. Second, once you get the ES nailed, determine what printer setting gives you the required Dmax for the process.

3. Third, make the curve correction.

Sandy

Click to expand...

Sandy,

That makes sense. I guess one can print the stouffer step wedge along side the digital negative step wedge to get confirmation of how much UV blocking density one is getting. Based on your experience of getting an ES of 2.6 then aiming for around 8.5 stops or 17 steps on a 21-step wedge would probably get me started in the right direction.

Thanks again for your help.

Richard

Poliweb said:

Sandy,

That makes sense. I guess one can print the stouffer step wedge along side the digital negative step wedge to get confirmation of how much UV blocking density one is getting. Based on your experience of getting an ES of 2.6 then aiming for around 8.5 stops or 17 steps on a 21-step wedge would probably get me started in the right direction.

Thanks again for your help.

Richard

Click to expand...

Yes, I would try to set the chemistry to get about 17 steps of a 21 step wedge. You should come very close to that with vandyke or pure palladium without any need for adjustment.

Humidity is an important factor. I try to work with the humidity at 55% or more.

Sandy King

sanking said:

Yes, I would try to set the chemistry to get about 17 steps of a 21 step wedge. You should come very close to that with vandyke or pure palladium without any need for adjustment.

Humidity is an important factor. I try to work with the humidity at 55% or more.

Sandy King

Click to expand...

Sandy,

I was thinking of going with Pt/Pd - possibly Na2. Would you suggest that I start pure Pd at first? It's certainly cheaper, would it also be easier for me starting out?

Thanks

Richard

Poliweb said:

I was thinking of going with Pt/Pd - possibly Na2. Would you suggest that I start pure Pd at first?

Click to expand...

Not to step on Sandy here, but with a digineg properly made you should have no need to control contrast with the Na2. What I like most about the diginegs is the ability to bend my negative to match the ES and use pure palladium. I only use the Na2 when printing in camera negs that need adjustment.

Bill