Handmade Curves: Basic Tutorial

I was a little sick (a summer cold virus) the last couple of days so I've been trapped in-doors. Thought I'd do a little web-slinging while recuperating this morning.

This a tutorial on how to scan and enter values for manually creating curves if you are using my RNP-Arrays or the Clay's Colour Ratio type of negative making systems. This was done partly so I could compare my results to ChartThrob but also because I realised some people can't run ChartThrob because of their software. Here's the 4-1-1 on how to roll your own curves by hand. Enjoy.

Dead Link Removed

~m

mkochsch said:

I was a little sick (a summer cold virus) the last couple of days so I've been trapped in-doors. Thought I'd do a little web-slinging while recuperating this morning.

Dead Link Removed

~m

Click to expand...

Man, I wish I could be this productive when I don't feel well.

This is great, clear and easy to follow, (and witty, too) and it's interesting to see how close it comes to the ChartThrob curve when you're done.

The one thing I'm not sure I follow completely is how to decide which 16 points out of the 101 to use in constructing the curve. When I used to construct curves using Dan Burkholder's method, it was simpler because you just used a short step wedge, not a 101 step tablet, and you could plot every one of the points. More primitive, perhaps, but easier to grasp.

Thanks for doing this, it's much appreciated,
Katharine

That's the "finesse" part I mentioned...seriously I do the 50 per cent one first and work the left (highlight) side first. It needs the most attention and the most points. Often I'll put one set down put a few more in and then end up using a different set of points if I see a rapid change in contrast. In the darker regions you can see a lot of "repeats", squares that give the same value three, four or fives times in a row. The change is pretty gradual in those areas. When I have multiple values like that I pick the one in the middle to sort of self average the line.

~m