Peter Lik

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

I am quite happy to buy new printer every three years if there is a increase in colour gamut, ease of operation with the new units.. I would never go down the route of a laser printer again as it was the cost of a house.. When they built the Lambda it was made to last and fortunately it still has maintenance contracts and top flight techs available and I grudgingly accept the maintenance contract to do my work.

On the other hand inkjet technology does not cripple a lab the size of mine and ROE is very predictable. Not so with RA4, or E6, or even C41 .. a very dicey situation for a young printer to jump on in this market...
I personally think for the young artist printer who wants to supplement their income or even go whole hog as a business- the digital to pt pd, and gum is the way I would go. I have already stated many times that this is the way for my personal work, and I am through my client base nurtured over 20 years introducing them to these processes.

I believe once enough artist's start showing permanent Colour and Black White work on gallery walls .. (the King with no Clothes photographers}getting huge bucks for sketchy permanence colour prints will start becoming a hot topic for Curators and Gallery Owners to start concerning themselves about. This may take a few years but I truly believe the cat will be out of the bag on this one within 5 years, therefore my predictions of RA4 demise.

Getting a good enlarged negative workflow is possible, all the gear could be assembled in one room , and portable , I see no downside for the young talented printers.I know a few
in this city that should consider this option.
Join the Revolution:munch:

hoffy said:
The problem is if we start talking too much about Inkjet, we will be told politely to sod off to a digital forum.....

Where I live, there is one pro lab and a few smaller labs that still do RA4 based prints (digitally exposed, mind you). They are still by far the cheaper option, but are very limited in both surface finish, material and size. The beauty of inkjet is that it can be printed on just about anything with relative ease. The machines that they use also mean vastly larger prints are a possibility.

But, talking to the owner of the Pro Lab, he is rather miffed to how the equipment suppliers do business with Inkjet equipment. He pays a yearly maintenance fee keep his Kodak Pegasus based gear going and he is happy to do so.

With his Epson Inkjet printer, they would rather him buy a new printer every few years.

Maybe this is why Kodak went to the brink.

Richard S. (rich815) · Mar 3, 2015

I love a good hand-printed RA-4 or other "analog-process" print but inkjet prints can be every bit as amazing and in some cases exceed in many aspects, some of which is discussed above. If you disagree I'm of the opinion you have just not seen a good inkjet print yet. It's not nearly as push-button easy as many make it out to be.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

Yes agreed- being good as something is not as easy as pushing a button- otherwise Polaroid would never tanked.

Richard Sintchak (rich815) said:
I love a good hand-printed RA-4 or other "analog-process" print but inkjet prints can be every bit as amazing and in some cases exceed in many aspects, some of which is discussed above. If you disagree I'm of the opinion you have just not seen a good inkjet print yet. It's not nearly as push-button easy as many make it out to be.

blansky · Mar 3, 2015

hoffy said:
The problem is if we start talking too much about Inkjet, we will be told politely to sod off to a digital forum.....

Where I live, there is one pro lab and a few smaller labs that still do RA4 based prints (digitally exposed, mind you). They are still by far the cheaper option, but are very limited in both surface finish, material and size. The beauty of inkjet is that it can be printed on just about anything with relative ease. The machines that they use also mean vastly larger prints are a possibility.

But, talking to the owner of the Pro Lab, he is rather miffed to how the equipment suppliers do business with Inkjet equipment. He pays a yearly maintenance fee keep his Kodak Pegasus based gear going and he is happy to do so.

With his Epson Inkjet printer, they would rather him buy a new printer every few years.

Maybe this is why Kodak went to the brink.

As with all new technology, there is a period of time when the customer unwittingly becomes the R&D lab rat.

I think that period is ending with digital to a great extent.

In the commercial realm, companies like Epson, and camera makers have come close to hitting their saturation point in new stuff/features. People are pretty satisfied with what is achievable with their digital stuff and don't need the newest thing, because it doesn't have any real advantages over what they have.

It's much like analog used to be. Buy the camera, and it was pretty stable for a number of years. My Canons are about 5 and 6 years old and my Epson 24 inch printer is about 8.

This is going to be a challenge I think for the business model of these companies.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

very very true...

blansky said:
As with all new technology, there is a period of time when the customer unwittingly becomes the R&D lab rat.

I think that period is ending with digital to a great extent.

In the commercial realm, companies like Epson, and camera makers have come close to hitting their saturation point in new stuff/features. People are pretty satisfied with what is achievable with their digital stuff and don't need the newest thing, because it doesn't have any real advantages over what they have.

It's much like analog used to be. Buy the camera, and it was pretty stable for a number of years. My Canons are about 5 and 6 years old and my Epson 24 inch printer is about 8.

This is going to be a challenge I think for the business model of these companies.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

I look at this more from a marketing perspective. They've invested a ton of time and money in R&D; and in fact, there's a downright surplus
in patents and ideas that will never see the light of day when in comes to inkjet options. Things are already beginning to plateau in term of
"good enough" reproduction. Then there's the pinch of an awful lot of competition in terms of machines and inks etc. Not a food fight I want
to be involved with. Just like all these kinds of things, better printmakers will go to great lengths to fine tune things, then a couple decades
later, when another surge in R&D hypothetically becomes realistic, lots of that effort will start looking primitive, just like action movies a
decade old. And of course, with any adolescent technology, you've always got people who will abuse it just for some superficial effect (like
the person originally in question in this thread). I'd rather spend my time on a more mature medium. Besides, my own investment is my
darkroom. No need to look elsewhere.

Mainecoonmaniac · Mar 3, 2015

I've heard lot of inkjet printers are sold with little or no margin to sell the inks. It's the analogy of selling the razor for very little and making money on the blades. The university art department where I work got a dozen FREE Canon Pro 1 printers. My guess is Canon is trying to make inroads into the market. I told my colleague that runs the lab that the school is getting a bunch of free crack pipes with one rock in it. In less than a year, I see all the empty ink cartridges and I'm sure replacement were ordered. Photo students today don't really learn much about color balance like the old days. The prints just come out like the calibrated monitors. At least there's no RA print process to maintain. No rollers to tar up. I'm one of many computer tech that haul away the dead printers making room for the new ones every few years.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

I am surrounded by many Colleges and Universities here in Toronto, and I think that teaching colour theory has stopped. I believe lighting ratio, and colour theory is glossed over and I wonder is it because many of the teachers do not have this understanding. It is a very detailed skill set to be able to see colour, identify it, and manipulate.

Now this is really surprising since I think the full understanding of colour, how colours react with each other , how to use complimentary colour's bridges RA4 printing and Inkjet printing.
We are at a stage where with white balance, onboard printer spectrometors to make profiles, and a greater understanding of colour management has given us the first step in making good colour prints.
But from my perspective this is only the start and with manipulation of colour in a scene we can enhance an image. Without a good colour theory background I wonder how people reach beyond the mundane.

Mainecoonmaniac said:
I've heard lot of inkjet printers are sold with little or no margin to sell the inks. It's the analogy of selling the razor for very little and making money on the blades. The university art department where I work got a dozen FREE Canon Pro 1 printers. My guess is Canon is trying to make inroads into the market. I told my colleague that runs the lab that the school is getting a bunch of free crack pipes with one rock in it. In less than a year, I see all the empty ink cartridges and I'm sure replacement were ordered. Photo students today don't really learn much about color balance like the old days. The prints just come out like the calibrated monitors. At least there's no RA print process to maintain. No rollers to tar up. I'm one of many computer tech that haul away the dead printers making room for the new ones every few years.

Mainecoonmaniac · Mar 3, 2015

Bob. I don't think the students aren't necessarily short changed. But the curriculum based on the quarter system at University of California limits how much time is spent learning. Instead of old fashioned, but useful color theory, it's learning software and color management . This knowledge has a very short shelf life. All the color theory I learned in school still applies. Gone are the days of students with their viewing filters trying to figure out how many CC's to correct on their prints. Now students can color correct using calibrated monitors and the eye dropper tools that read RGB values in photoshop and histograms. Color correction by the numbers instead of by eye. I'm feeling very old now.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

Ahhh yess sage one I agree... But only if students or others for that matter understand complimentary colours and what colour they are made up of then real magic can occur.

for example lets take green , its basically the most common colour in landscape.. green is made up of equal amounts of cyan and yellow... now lets imagine a blue building in front of a grove of green trees... well in my crazy world I will look at the green and push it more to yellow than cyan, therefore having a complimentary bias in the image.- blue - yellow complimentary colours
A lovely person in a red sweater in front of the same green I would bias the green to cyan.. creating another complimentary bias in the image..red -cyan complimentary colours.
Unless one knows how the colour wheel works , one is limiting the whole world of color imaging.

I use LAB for all colour measurments and if I could find a meter to use outside to read the colour I would be in heaven..

Mainecoonmaniac said:
Bob. I don't think the students aren't necessarily short changed. But the curriculum based on the quarter system at University of California limits how much time is spent learning. Instead of old fashioned, but useful color theory, it's learning software and color management . This knowledge has a very short shelf life. All the color theory I learned in school still applies. Gone are the days of students with their viewing filters trying to figure out how many CC's to correct on their prints. Now students can color correct using calibrated monitors and the eye dropper tools that read RGB values in photoshop and histograms. Color correction by the numbers instead of by eye. I'm feeling very old now.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Even on these photo forums, anytime I've even mentioned the primaries of RGB, immediately any number of people will correct me and tell me that with pigments, the primaries are RYB - after all, isn't that what they teach you in art class, beginning in second grade where the students typically eat half their pigments and glues? I have no idea what UC campus is in question. In my neighborhood there are a couple
of MFA grads from the UCB program who have become very well known photographers. One is quite expert at both darkroom and digital printing, while the other is not and farms all that out. Typical of that university - there's always a few home run individuals, and then the rest of the pack still eating their pigment and glue. But I've gotta be careful what I say. I've got family members, including my own wife, with UCB degrees. I personally have quite a background with industrial pigments, and back when I was younger and more energetic did
a lot of architectural color consultation, and was frequently well paid to correct the color decisions of the alleged pros who didn't actually
understand the interplay of pigment metamerism, color temp, sun angle, fading, the sheer psychology of color, how perceived hue is really more a matter of modulated relationship than fixed values, etc, etc. So, as an aside, when I make a sarcastic remark about how such and
such a popular photographer or painter is really a zero when it comes to color, I clearly understand what I am stating. I helps to understand
these components to vision, and not just eat them!

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Bob - there are outdoor meters that read color. But any application of them is largely a placebo. Even here, any kind of machine reading is
always backed up by final visual tuning in representative lighting. Then is the official color matcher still has an issue he has me check it.
The whole point of all that kind of technology is just to speed up the game. It never replaces the human eye, and even the eye by itself cannot replace experience and an understanding of color theory, as you know quite well. A lot of these instruments in various industries are made by X-Rite. The most expensive one was in my wife's "office" back in her biotech days. I was a small room with a true timed bank vault door on it, where trade-secret DNA-derived pharmaceutical samples and designer vaccines were purified. That little color matching gadget was worth six million bucks.

cliveh · Mar 3, 2015

I have talked to people who seem to think the histogram shape of a digital image is more important than what the image looks like.

pdeeh · Mar 3, 2015

I see people on apug who talk more about the shapes of film curves than composition

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

Drew , with all inkjet printing we are dealing with RGB in most cases, and using its complimentary colours CMY to adjust.. same for RA4... We never delve into the world of pigments and paint as their language is different than ours as well as the way colour mixes. But you know this right??

I have used additive enlargers and subtractive enlargers.. both work well , but the colour principles are as Kodak manuals lay out for us.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

I love the idea of a colour meter that can read the visual world in LAB and I would use it .. think about how we perceive skys.. I always think of them as blue, and when not seen this way in a photograph I wonder about the colour balance.... But when I go on long road trips while my wife is driving I look at natural scenes and come to understand that mother nature can present itself in very different ways, hues and tints of colour not really thought to be correct.

I work so much inside that I do need this reality check... now I know you are the ultimate Mountain man and do not have these problems as me a city slicker. I think that a meter would be an incredible device.

DREW WILEY said:
Bob - there are outdoor meters that read color. But any application of them is largely a placebo. Even here, any kind of machine reading is
always backed up by final visual tuning in representative lighting. Then is the official color matcher still has an issue he has me check it.
The whole point of all that kind of technology is just to speed up the game. It never replaces the human eye, and even the eye by itself cannot replace experience and an understanding of color theory, as you know quite well. A lot of these instruments in various industries are made by X-Rite. The most expensive one was in my wife's "office" back in her biotech days. I was a small room with a true timed bank vault door on it, where trade-secret DNA-derived pharmaceutical samples and designer vaccines were purified. That little color matching gadget was worth six million bucks.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Bingo. Michael - do you even know what a primary means? Bob - your laser printers are obviously additive, your enlargers subtractive.
A couple of my enlargers are additive, but have subtractive controls for printing convenience, even though the three lights are hard RGB.
In graphics printing and hypothetical process pigments, you're using CMYK. Inkjet fits none of the above because there is no true set of process colors, but a whole range of inks in order to cover gamut flaws that would exist in any basic set. These are obviously balanced using
modern analytical geometry color mapping programs for spectrophotometers. This would have taken reams of log paper plotting back in the
old days. I still have some of that paper.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Should have clarified that, Bob. You're obviously monitoring the net effect with something like a CMYK densitometer if you're reading a
test strip, inkjet or otherwise. But that is not how the inkjet software itself is thinking. It's not thinking light at all, but basically like a paint
machine. The prime bottleneck in the engineering is that you can't just go out a use basic process colors based upon permanence or transparency, whatever. The key factor is getting through those tiny nozzles. That's why things get so complicated. There are shortfalls on
certain of the components that have to be supplemented by others. Then you've got cost factors, drying, dyes lakes, all kinds of things going on, a few of which almost nobody seems aware of, really. The theory will get much more elegant when you simplify it down for gum printing.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Sorry, but I never attended kindergarten; and once I was in school, never got into eating Elmers glue or boogers like the others kids. I still
have my first set of watercolor pigments, which my aunt gave to me. Little did I realize that the blue pigment was pure lapis worth more per ounce than gold. Everything hand ground and far more lightfast than anything you can find in an art store, at any price. There is still a dealer for color-graded lapis powder in Amsterdam. No wonder that the pope bankrupted Germany when he had the Sistine Chapel painted. Pity that I've never used that pigment set in adult life except to spot the occasional color print that didn't respond well to retouching dye. And pity that I never had the patience to become a true painter. But where do we get a good yellow pigment anymore, now that cadmium is largely outlawed? I know where there is a lot of it - roughly beneath my feet. There used to be a big Sherwin Williams industrial paint factory nearby. That's why it's illegal to even drill a hole in a concrete slab in this part of town, without a special permit. All that lead and
cadmium still in the soil, sealed off.

Bob Carnie · Mar 3, 2015

No what I am saying is that whether an additive or subtractive workflow the three primary colours are Red Green and Blue, and the three subtractive are Cyan Magenta and Yellow. I have a spectrometer to make profiles and the new devices have onboard spectrometers that take multitudes of colour readings to push them into place.

no matter what proocess I work with these six and any combination of them to color correct... Red - Cyan Green - Magenta Blue - Yellow..

the colour wheel is always based on this.. I am sending this information to the lasers or the sprayers or the dichroics... and from my perspective without this basic knowledge of colour photographic theory one would be limited..

If I was mixing non transparent pigmented ink and just playing around I would have a different set of parameters dictated by the pigments and how they work together..
But if you send over a colour file to an profiled inkjet machine and then to a profiled laser RA4machine they will be in effect identical..In fact I test print for a client on fuji semigloss inkjet and final print on Fujiflex.. the resulting balance is the same... Of course the paper surface (gloss is different) but the basic colour balance and density is the same..

DREW WILEY said:
Should have clarified that, Bob. You're obviously monitoring the net effect with something like a CMYK densitometer if you're reading a
test strip, inkjet or otherwise. But that is not how the inkjet software itself is thinking. It's not thinking light at all, but basically like a paint
machine. The prime bottleneck in the engineering is that you can't just go out a use basic process colors based upon permanence or transparency, whatever. The key factor is getting through those tiny nozzles. That's why things get so complicated. There are shortfalls on
certain of the components that have to be supplemented by others. Then you've got cost factors, drying, dyes lakes, all kinds of things going on, a few of which almost nobody seems aware of, really. The theory will get much more elegant when you simplify it down for gum printing.

DREW WILEY · Mar 3, 2015

Yeah.... but everything in between is different. Ink behaves like paint. The software converts it into readable CMY values, just like that schizophrenic black box brain on my enlarger converts RGB output to simulate CMY, which is how the control buttons read. It's not really too
difficult to do in a closed-loop system. You just install CMY filters in the mixing chamber which feed the feedback sensor, but not the main
projection system. Right around the time Durst was ending production of their true industrial enlargers, they had redesigned their colorheads in this manner. Those were never sold on the open market. But they never did figure out how to deal with all the extra heat, since it takes much more light to go through narrow-band hard additive filters. I did it with trimmer filters, which sandwich the correct band width. And no, I'm not an electrical engineer. I cannibalized a lot of stuff. And the little black box brain was supplied by the same folks who built the Chromira. But inkjet machines apply the same kind of "thinking" as multi-pigment industrial color mixing gear (NOT like screen
gamut readers, though both use a tweak of CIE color mapping). It's complicated. With gum, you'll just need a basic set of process colors.
You can pick true pigments. One of the flaws in olden carbon printing is that certain characteristics inherent to the traditional pigments, or
perhaps undetected contaminants, tended to "poison" gelatin with progressive cross-linking. Maybe that could be avoided nowadays; but given the fact that so many colorants are now coming from China or India, I doubt it. You'd have to be pretty fussy about the source. What
these kinds of factors do to gum I can't say, because it hasn't been studied to anywhere near the degree as gelatin.

M6F6E6 · Apr 18, 2015

errrr

blansky said:
I believe people are over thinking this:

He is a good photographer that chose to open his own storefront to sell his work.

Like it or don't like it, he is no different than anyone else in any other profession that opens a store and sells his wares.

It's not important where he fits into the "art" world.

The bottom line is, if you sell something for $20 or $6 million dollars, that's what it's worth.

It IS different - because when you reaad up on the changes to his sales team and methods in recent yeaars, it is pretty pathetic.

Go watch Danny DeVito in Tin Men....

Your argument here reminds me of Rupert Murdoch talking about his virtual monopoly of the Australian media... (paraphrased) "There is no law against anyone else starting up another national newspaper"

Of course Lik has the right to sell, but I and others think his methods seem suspect, by many accounts, and this hurts the industry and all of trying to honestly sell our work. Lik is very different to bona fide artists and photographers who are dedicated to art.

blansky · Apr 18, 2015

M6F6E6 said:
Your argument here reminds me of Rupert Murdoch talking about his virtual monopoly of the Australian media... (paraphrased) "There is no law against anyone else starting up another national newspaper"

.

OK.

How is Lik a monopoly???

People are just envious that he makes so much money. If you hate his work don't buy it. His success or failure as a businessman or photographer has no bearing on you.

I was never a fan of Warhol. Did he destroy the art market?? Did his self promotion and lifestyle have any affect on me. No.

The bottom line is who the hell cares what some other photographer is doing or getting for his work. It has absolutely no bearing on your life.

Lik haters are merely people who are jealous that someone who self promotes, over saturates, uses photoshop, and sells lots of pictures is making lots of money.

You need to ask yourself, why you care so much.

Eric Rose · Apr 18, 2015

blansky said:
The bottom line is who the hell cares what some other photographer is doing or getting for his work. It has absolutely no bearing on your life.

Lik haters are merely people who are jealous that someone who self promotes, over saturates, uses photoshop, and sells lots of pictures is making lots of money.

You need to ask yourself, why you care so much.

My sentiments exactly. The people who really need therapy are generally to cheap to spring for it. They also think the shrinks make way to much money and don't deserve it.

doughowk · Apr 19, 2015

We may applaud Lik for circumventing the art market gatekeepers. But eventually the art buying public will recognize that the emperor has no artistic clothes. Then the gatekeepers will be reinforced as to the worth of their value judgements. And artists will again be supplicants to them. Nothing will have changed.

Peter Lik

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