How to Create Digital Negatives? 3 Different Techniques + Comparison

[@CristianGeelen]

Hahahhaha that ending! Not making a fool of you, I just think it is amazing. Sometimes just not overthinking things just works.

[@fenkemeijer73]

Great twist, I see what you did there, the message I am reading; go ahead and try it out just invert it.

[@HiddenLight]

Hahah! Pretty much :) That's a great start

[@johntheexplainer]

After losing patience printing to an Epson 3880 from Mac OS, I finally tried Epson Print Layout as a plug-in RIP for Photoshop and it's *so* much more straightforward and reliable.

[@jasonblackman]

I forgot to mention when I was picking up the print you made, I love that all the printers are named for LOTR names. My inner nerd was freaking out, especially at the little printed faces taped to the front. I loved it and your cred went up about 9 notches that day. One for every ring for men 😉🧙🏼‍♂

[@gilbertwalker6769]

This was a great video, Matt! Thanks for your explanation of the process and for your sharing with us that unexpected results are part of the printing game.

[@dougthomson5544]

Love this, brother. I’m afraid I gave up on Epson after taking a sledge hammer to a 7890 - literally, really, truly, indeed, it was very cathartic. And, there is no QuadTone for Canon - unless it is a recent innovation. As for Canon. I haven’t had any significant problems printing digital negatives to date, but maybe I’m just deluding myself.

[@aramb]

My hat is off to you for showing things all the way through, including the unexpected result. I think your point is valid, though - sometimes you get lucky/unlucky but having a consistent, repeatable process is always best.

[@toonjanssens8523]

Great video! Your doing the comparison between a regular inktjet printer and the Piezography setup. I have a Canon imagePROGRAF PRO printer which has an additional gray and lightgray inkt for better tonal range. Is there still a big difference with the Piezography inkt compared to a printer like my Canon?

[@dougthomson5544]

Sorry, this is a delightful video … very glad I found your channel.

[@HiddenLight]

Welcome!

[@justinkmiller]

Thanks for sharing, I really enjoyed seeing the process. 🤙🏽

[@tundrusphoto4312]

Brilliant video. Thank you.

[@HiddenLight]

Glad it was helpful!

[@BS-hx8sq]

Hi Matt - please advise what printer and what transparency film you printed on for the simple print

[@frequentlycynical642]

Did I miss the wet darkroom or something? Great video, but most of us don't have anywhere near that kind of equipment.

[@F9FCJ429]

Computers add fun! When I started playing with the idea of using my camera to scan medium format instead of laying out $3000 for a used Nikon 9000 I quickly learned that you can’t just invert a negative. Even if you do all the tricks to balance out the mask color, everything was just weird looking. Long story short it was the gamma curve camera manufacturers insist on applying, even to a raw output. Everything‘s fine until you invert. I suspect the plain inkjet woes are related to gamma. Without typing out a book: as simply, as I can put it, when you invert, the heel and toe baked into the print driver need to invert too. The sign is wrong. Instead of an S curve you’re effectively getting an inverted S-curve. The fix is to force the print driver to honor the numbers in the original file and forget about trying to make it pretty and contrasty. I’ve never tried it with my Canon pro 2000 but my old HP 44 inch 3200 photo printer had a linear mode option in the driver made for digital negatives. That printer had quite a following in the black and white print market because it could make a true black without compositing colored ink. Too bad HP decided not to do any more development of the line after 2009.

[@verezworkshop1483]

Your method, is it the same as conversions for dtf, screen printing? If so, film direct has one for canon pixma 100s which can be picked up cheap. Software 300, inkset 175

[@thetinmansheart]

Bless ya, for sharing the surprising results with us 😂 Maybe I’ll be able to afford doing my own PPL prints!

[@artfrontgalleries1818]

My Canon 200 and Canon transparency (film). It comes with printer profiles or you can find a free profile online. I'm doing 13x19 (European A3plus ?) Choose a paper that is pretty smooth but can stand up to the "wet" process

[@c64club]

For gum bichrome, laser printed transparencies are good enough. Even if "raster" is visible. Precise cyanotypes on good paper may show the difference between laser and inkjet.

[@c64club]

Most precise contact prints come from 4xresolution + dithered images printed with pigment ink- such printed transparency works more liks fine grain negative, compared to normally printed.

[@xavierfumat7567]

Do you provide the service of making a digital negative to purchase?

[@XENObrine]

If you were printing through a paper negative, wouldn't you get the texture of the paper in your printed image?

[@TERRYBIGGENDEN]

I only do salt printing and cyanotypes. But I use paper negs, soaked in olive il and dried off. I nowadays just get the image to what I want, invert it and print on plain paper in red. I get a softness ion the salt print but it's not much and I love it I gave up all the endless fiddling with curves and so on ages ago. It's an endless nightmare. I make prints as an art and mostly I'm happy with them.

[@rajkumarkrishna5849]

Hi I am using a EPSON Dye based inkjet printer. I make digital negatives for Gum prints . Use a UV light box. I have doubts on UV blocking of Dye Inks. Any thoughts ? I seem to dull the Highlight every time

[@HiddenLight]

I've only ever played with the standard color inkjet inks, never with the dye systems... if your highlights are coming out sad and dark, sounds like you're right and you aren't getting full UV blocking. Dangit!

[@rajkumarkrishna5849]

@@HiddenLight thanks. Will try with more density

[@patde2012]

Thank you for all the work you put into your videos, I have learned so much from all this!!!! Also thanks for kicking me down yet another rabbit hole.... 🤓

[@malcolmteferi4497]

How do you achieve the black framing borders?

[@andrefelixstudio2833]

Sorry that I stumbled across your video and interrupted you if you were doing some thing more important before you were asked the questions! LOL

[@yasumotonoboru]

Yeah, I was already a little skeptic when you started with "process C is better", and then revealed that you had actually never done process A. And it would have been REALLY nice if we could have seen what the actual prints looked like, you know, up close.

[@zoehead8029]

Hey there the bill Cunningham video is private!!

[@Pollock.iconoclast]

Fogging is a bummer for sure. The slightest contamination will really show up. Looking great as always of course!

[@DanGruenflagheadshots]

Send it!

[@UNOCASTILLO]

how it is possible that you do not make any test strip or step wedge? how you can come out with a curve if do not make any test?. not all chemicals react the same, wheather, humidity, heat, dilution, paper, etc, etc all tose are parameter that would change contrast and tone on a print. how you can work just with a curve and hit print without any tests?.

[@rcpmac]

Speaking of time and suffering, you should edit 10 minutes out of this thing

[@neilgenower9950]

Even more confused now! I've fretted like a fretted thing over these digital negs and recently came to the conclusion that I'm just overthinking everything..... Or is your result just a freak?... see, there I go again ! Dammit.

[@MothmanBaddie]

You got this

[@nestorknows]

Will all due respect, this needed a script and some editing. You could cut this video by a quarter by just eliminating the pauses. V good information otherwise

[@WanderingRobotStudio]

I heard today that the kids don't say yeet anymore.

[@PapaKampe]

Dude. just modify the original image a bit. Burning, dodging. If you're happier with the mid-contrast, just adjust the rest of the image.

[@muppas82]

I loved this video, and the surprise result at the end caught me by surprise too! You coated the second sheet of paper and left it sitting face up on top of your exposure box while you printed the first one. I bet there was enough UV coming out from under the box and bouncing off the walls to fog it in the few minutes you printed that first one. Just a guess. Also, wanted to chime in... There's a 4th option, and it's somewhere in between options 2 and 3 in your video. While you can use premade curves from Bostick and Sullivan (or elsewhere), you can do a similar calibration with your own inkjet printer and chemical process and it can yield some amazing results. Granted, you don't get the density you would from a PDN ink set, but it's a pretty acceptable stopgap if you can't afford or don't want a dedicated b&w only printer. I've definitely been toying with converting my old Epson R1800 to a piezography ink set, but until then, I have gotten phenomenal results with the system I use. To start, grab a photoshop tool called Chart Throb: www.botzilla.com/gearhead/2006/10/24/ChartThrob-A-Tool-for-Printing-Digital-Negatives.html It will print out a step wedge for you on whatever transparency media you prefer. It's important to always use the same color space, print media, and print settings for your step wedge as you will for all negatives printed from the resulting curves. Make a print from that step wedge with whatever chemical process you want to use. Again, make sure to be consistent in your process with paper, chemistry, and processing. Manufacturers can often change their paper manufacturing up slightly and throw off your curve, so you may need to recalibrate occasionally. Let the step wedge print dry, then scan it and import into Photoshop and run chartthrob on it. It'll analyze the scan and generate a custom curve for you. You'll want to save that. Now, in Photoshop, you'll convert an image to black and white, invert it, and apply the curve to it. Print this out as a negative and test out the curve. It should be pretty close. But you may need to go through and tweak the curve a bit. I generally smooth it out by hand a bit, but it's generally very good out of the box. Like the PDN process, this can take a long time to get right and be ready to spend days working on printing in whatever processes you choose to make curves for. If you have any questions on it, or just want to chat with a like minded alt-printer, feel free to find me on insta @patrickmorrisphoto I love this stuff.