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Understanding Split Grade Printing

Well I have met digital photographers who are more concerned in getting the histogram curves as they want them, without looking at the image.
 
Pieter12 said:
OK. Lead me through how you would use this information to make a split-grade print.
Click to expand...

I've mentioned this before. If you want to understand/visualize how variable contrast paper does what it does, create a good quality, straight (no burning or dodging) split grade print of a fairly normal scene - one that, as usual, involves one exposure of the low contrast green light/yellow filtered light and another exposure of the high contrast blue light/magenta filtered light. Take note of those two exposure times.
Now do separate prints - one with just the low contrast green light/yellow filtered light, and the other with just the high contrast blue light/magenta filtered light.
The results help give you a visual appreciation of the respective contributions of the two exposures.
Some of us are more likely to find that the graphs aid us in coming to an intuitive understanding of how things work, while others will get more help from the visual demonstration.
 
cliveh said:
Well I have met digital photographers who are more concerned in getting the histogram curves as they want them, without looking at the image.
Click to expand...

And I've a good friend who loves using his step tablets and a densitometer to aid in his darkroom printing. It is great that there is variety in the world.
 
Pieter12 said:
OK. Lead me through how you would use this information to make a split-grade print.
Click to expand...

I can merely show you the door Pieter, you must walk through it.

But in all seriousness, I had a question, made a hypothesis, tested it, learned something. And as a bonus I wrote everything down and shared it with the community. That's enough for me. If it doesn't jive with you, that's cool too, I didn't set out to make other people better printers, just to answer a question I had.
 
Pieter12 said:
OK. Lead me through how you would use this information to make a split-grade print.
Click to expand...

A couple of simple examples of non-split-grade printing:

1. I assume the vertical axes of the graphs are in zones instead of densities. With that, you can look at a test print, and the graph of that grade will tell you how much you need to dodge/burn an area, without making another test strip.

2. Suppose you have the shadows correct in your test print, and now you need to change grade to fix highlights. The two curves will tell you how much to change exposure in order to preserve shadows. (This technique works for preserving any tone, not just shadows).

These two advantages alone would cause some folks to print those graphs and hang them on the wall by the enlarger.
 


While all your work shows what happens to a theoretical print, I rather see a real print made by following my method from post 99. The results are easy to see and if one wants to see the magenta only print and the yellow only print one can quickly reproduce them. No charts and no tables to look at.
 

I think people are misinterpreting my post. These graphs are not guides or cheatsheets or reference material. The point is to visualize how blending grades affects the tonal scale. They help show understand how turning the "knobs" (or knob in the case of the 23ciii) of split grade printing affect any given print. I won't be printing these out or referencing them in the dark room, they just help me understand how the paper works better.
 

Self research is a good thing to do. Now I understand. Thank you.
 

Hi, I'm interested in watching the videos you mention, do you have the link? thanks
 
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