i'm not sure how often i drop in either... quick way - take a digi-photo of some cumulo sirus clouds and 'gradient map' it.

basicly so you don't give incorrect ink % to a different printer- an image that doesn't suit X, will print different on Y and Z. RGB, if it's colour corrected holds a nutral grey ballance in the highlight , midtone, and shadow areas of the image, this can simply be 'converted to cmyk to suit a profile of just about any printer, and concrete wont look green.

for scanning all you need to do is capture the difference between hilight and shadow densities, once the scanner is set resonably right - you can correct, or compensate it's smaller errors, with practice, with photshop - is not just hilight shadow of 'RGB' it the curve of R, the curve of G and the curve of B you must change, you can save all changes you make to all colour curves, if the shots are consistant, re use it. open up the info and make the numbers of a higlight area match, say R:12 G:12 B:12 and a shaddow area R:250 G:250 B:250 CMYK is slighly more complicated but it's a worthy challenge.

i find that if i just paint with a colour and click on the forground colour and move the HSB sliders (this does not convert the image)toward grey, it works ok, but as far as entire image effects goes... perhaps a new layer, fill it with black, the layer mode is 'colour' this will give you the image in grey scale (similar if not the same as 'desaturate) but the *L channel automaticly gives you the luminosity (and is grey scale) of certain colours _there are disparities between a desaturation and the *L channel the info pallette, can give you the % of grey that a colour has without conversion, but i think you will have to find a new kind of purple untill you get one that is 5% black, in the info

Message edited on: 01/07/2005 13:06

i don't know how they can call themselves a print-shop without any (or lame attempt at) calibration, find out what they print with, and use that profile, i've never done neg's, but i know i always have to adjust the highlight, midtone and shadow areas, to suit my printing conditions (not my monitor) i use grey ballance tecniques. one you have a profile you can use the info pallette to see the % of cmyk values of 5%, 50% and 95% values in greysale (black) use those numbers to adjust the highlight, midtone and shadow areas,of your image, for each ink,
Each image may have different densities, so actions aren't really an option, unless you can make a script that scans for the darkest area and non-specular hilights...

this is just a small sample of somthing resembling assistance

Message edited on: 01/04/2005 20:10

select all, if one can..

I think a silver curve actually introduces cyan/blue colour cast of about 8% in the mid-tones - it relies on monitor perception as far as i'm concerned.

Attached Link: http://www.butzi.net/articles/toning.htm

i've experimented with masks, selections, and channels manipulation in rgb, cmyk, duotone and multichannel- individually. I understand I have the tools to exploit duotone as a multichannel, which open up many otpions. now lets use those tools.

...and did it - dcs lets me save as eps. In addition to what duo tone lets me do it lets me manipulate- every pixel - in any chosen channel - the ink. dramaticly changing the interaction between the two. it feels like the power is back in my hands - bring it on, alpha channels, layer masks and vectors.

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 18:55

as long as when flattened it's not pixilated (within illustrator). overlay sounds like layers of vector info to me, which should be small in meg size. I often wondered if you could make an all vector file that;s bigger than it's exported .jpg.

wait i'll google that... this looks like fun.

I fully understand that i need two seperations named as Colour A and Colour B - two plates. i'd prefer in certain areas of the image colours not to be mixed and in others be mixed. the duo tone curve is inadequate. now that i have seen it DCS looks better - but not knowing what it is hinders my efforts. so is it 'save as" .dcs ? and how compatible is it? it sounds like an image mode - "multi channel" and i have yet to save these without .psd as the extention.