Printing Black & White Image
Lesson 40 from: The Professional Photographer’s Digital WorkflowMichael Clark
Printing Black & White Image
Lesson 40 from: The Professional Photographer’s Digital WorkflowMichael Clark
Lessons
Class Introduction
08:17 2Shooting Workflow: Set-up The Camera
15:43 3Shooting Workflow: Histograms and Exposure
18:14 4Shooting Workflow: Sensor Cleaning
32:50 5Overview of Color Management
17:31 6Color Management: Monitor
11:49 7Color Management: Workspace
03:40 8Color Management: Monitor Calibration
25:52Color Management: Do I Need This?
03:42 10Introduction to Lightroom®
05:44 11Download & Import Images With Lightroom®
06:32 12Lightroom® Preferences
09:09 13Six Ways to Speed-up Lightroom®
14:02 14To DNG or Not to DNG?
06:47 15A Logical Editing Process in Lightroom®
08:56 16File & Folder Naming in Lightroom®
08:39 17Batch Renaming in Lightroom®
05:51 18Entering Metadata in Lightroom®
03:35 19Managing Images in Lightroom®
07:39 20Introduction to the Develop Module in Lightroom®
04:45 21Lightroom® Develop Module
24:01 22Sharpening, Chromatic Aberration & Vignetting in Lightroom®
12:34 23Graduated Filters & Spot Tool in Lightroom®
09:59 24Converting images to Black & White in Lightroom®
13:01 25Creating Panoramas in Lightroom
07:46 26Creating HDR Images in Lightroom®
09:29 27Lightroom® to Photoshop® Workflow
07:04 28Export Images to Photoshop®
08:54 29Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Basic Adjustments
36:49 30Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Retouching
15:16 31Finalizing Images in Photoshop®: Saving Master Files
09:45 32Make Fine Art Prints: The Cost
15:37 33Make Fine Art Prints: Ink Jet Printers
05:23 34Make Fine Art Prints: Ink Jet Papers
10:14 35Make Fine Art Prints: Understand ICC Profiles
08:44 36Make Fine Art Prints: Sharpen Image
18:26 37Printing From Photoshop®
09:11 38Printing From Lightroom®
05:07 39Compare Monitor to Physical Prints
06:33 40Printing Black & White Image
09:10 41Extended Workflow: Back Up Images
35:19 42Extended Workflow: Storage Options
18:32 43Extended Workflow: Archiving Images
15:55 44Submitting images to Clients
28:32 45Prepping Images for Social Media
08:44 46Alternative Workflows
08:49 47Final Q&A
19:56Lesson Info
Printing Black & White Image
We're gonna do a black and white. So let's do this guy. (hums) And while that's happening, and I don't know these Cannon printers. When you're on my Epson printers, they actually have a black and white mode that the printer decides the tones of the image. And it's pretty phenomenal. This Cannon may have the same type mode and it probably works pretty well. Oh, recover it. So I recovered a few of those things. Let's close this out. Don't need to save that. So, again, image size, so backing up to what I was saying. If your printer has a black and white mode, and let's go back to this image here. It is in RGB color. So this is in Prophoto color, this is not even though it's a black and white image to our eyes this is not technically in a grayscale color mode. And if we want to print this in the black and white Epson color environment, or the black and white Epson mode, we would have to change this to grayscale to access that mode, and then we'd have to turn off the Photoshop color managem...
ent and turn on the printer color management and just let the printer go for it. And we'll see what happens with the Canon here. Let's try printing it in this RGB color mode because some of these printers do really well with that, some don't, you'll have to experiment with whatever printer you have if they have a black and white printing mode built into the printer software. The idea is that you've got all these inks in here, I don't know how many inks this one has, it probably has eight to 12 inks in there, and if you print in color mode on a black and white image sometimes you can impart a color cast or a color toning onto that image because it's using some of the inks besides just black inks. I know my Epson printer has matte black, it's got glossy black, it's got medium black, it's got mid gray and it's got all these different tones of black that it only uses for black and white prints and it doesn't use any color. Also black and white prints are really tricky in that if I walk back here and hold up a black and white print next to this glowing blue wall, it's gonna have a cast of blue on it and the the light you look at that black and white print can really affect how you see the image and how you see a color cast in the black and white or not. So, not to get too crazy about that. Let me just size this image real quick. I'm not even gonna sharpen it just for speed here since we're running a little bit behind. Let's do 10 there and see what happens. Let's do 15 for consistency here. Okay. (hums) Downsizing the image. Let's just make sure that's a size I hope it's at. 10 by 15, 300, all right, perfect. And we're just gonna hit File, we're gonna go into Canon's print studio again. All right. And it's only giving me that dialogue of resolution because we're running it through the monitor then through the TV, then out to you. And for some reason it keeps opening up the web. So, it still retains all the same settings, we're still gonna pull out another sheet of this paper. I don't know, just like photography it's kind of fun when you're printing to see how it comes out. It's like we've got some new object here that we've gotta take a look at. Let me go behind this guy to stick that in there. I will say when you're determining which printer to buy, I've owned both Canon and Epson as I've said. Canons can produce amazing prints just like Epson can, it's apples to oranges, whatever you prefer. If you can try one out and maybe you would find out you'd prefer one over another. It might be a price point thing, it might be what they're offering in terms of specs. There might be a whole bunch of stuff. Or who you know, it might be your friend who has a Canon printer and he really loves it, or she really loves hers, and that's what you get because they're getting great results, so that's why you got what you got and they can help you. That's a nice thing, with settings and stuff. So, I know there was a black thing but let's just try it with the profile and see what happens here. And see what we get. And while we're doing this we're kind of at the end of where we're at. We'll turn the monitor around and compare this to what we're getting. But questions here. Do any of you own printers at home and print your work? Nope? One. Mine's in storage right now. Well it's in storage so that's not being used. It's a hard sell to tell people, "Print your images." Especially to amateur photographers, they don't like for me to say that you're gonna become a better photographer if you print your work. Well in reality you're gonna become a better photographer if you're obsessed with photography. And if you're obsessed with photography then this is part of it, and you're probably obsessed with other things about photography besides printing. Color management like me, you see the whole gambit of this digital workflow as me being obsessed about every little aspect of the workflow from how I capture the image to how I work it up, to how I fine tune the monitor, to the equipment I have, and I'm obviously spending a lot of money to make all this happen. Which may or may not be what you're gonna do as an amateur photographer. So it's just up to you how much you take out of this or leave behind. But I will say I've gotten older over the years and in my college days I had posters on my walls. When I bought my new house I thought, "I want to put some nice framed pictures up," "and it's gonna cost me some money" "to make the prints and frame them." Framing can be exceptionally expensive. But when you live with a print on a wall, it's a completely different thing than looking at images on Instagram. I mean that print of Tony is on my wall in my office and I see that every single day. And some days I just sit back and I'm on the phone and I'm just looking at that thing like, "Wouldn't it be great to be back there" "because it was an amazing experience?" But also like, "Wow, that's kind of a good image still." This is another thing. When I decide which are my best images for my print portfolio I put them as my screensaver, like I have on my laptop you've probably seen on the background of my big monitor, or my print viewing box is sitting right next to my desk. And I'll make prints and leave them in there. And a week or two later after I've worked up the image, I look at that and I'm like, "Hm, that's decent, I like that." And then maybe a month later I'm like, "Pretty solid." Six months later I'm like, "That image really stands out," and a couple years later I'm like, "It's still in my print portfolio." "That's one of the best images I ever shot." So the more you live with an image the more you understand whether it's good or not. If after a week I'm like, "Nah, nevermind." "Let's tear that print up and put it in the trash." That image won't get into my portfolio. It's still maybe a good image, but it's not rising to the top. So the longer you live with an image the more you recognize whether it's your best work or not your best work. I have to say Canon's just straight in the RGB color profile did pretty well for this print. Let me put it in the print viewing box here. And this print viewing box has a little cool thing. It's a little tough with that size of a paper, and if you're seeing it at certain angles you see all kinds of weird reflections on it so take that into account. Let me pull that image up here on the computer. I'll just pull it up in Lightroom since it's easy to make it huge. And again it looks a little darker because of our viewing environment. But so you can see that. That looks pretty awesome on the print. It looks a little more contrasty there than it does here. Again that's because it's so bright in here I think. But here's what I'm talking about. When you've got your color management dialed. Maybe I make another print because I decide my processing wasn't exactly what I wanted and the eyes are a little too dark underneath the eyebrows. But for a black and white print I have pure white in the image, I have pure black on his shirt. It's definitely a stylized portrait because that's not how it looked to my eye. But it's a pretty powerful image, intense, you know?
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Bonus Materials with RSVP
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Michael is a true professional and readily explains all of the nitty gritty issues of a photographer's digital workflow, including important things like Color Management, Lightroom workflows, Printing, and more. He is eager to answer your questions and has a thorough knowledge (after all, he worked with the original engineers at Adobe and wrote a book on it) and passion that he loves to share. He can get way deep into the subject, which I found fascinating. You can tell Michael has great experience in teaching and also likes to learn from his students. He is very authentic, honest, and direct. I highly recommend this class, and look forward to another one of Michael's courses in the future!
a Creativelive Student
This is an excellent course. It reinforced what I already knew and enhanced my spotty skills with new knowledge. I really like Michael's explanation of saving the document for print and web and the importance of doing these differently. Using the histogram to show this was terrific. Each session there is some valuable gem.
Elizabeth Bishop
This class is fantastic and is just what I was looking for! The teacher knows the subject WELL and he makes it understandable and easy to follow along. In each segment, he gets right to the point explaining just enough content to make it understandable. He doesn't waste your time. I highly recommend this class. It's the best tech class I have watched on Creative Live.