Copying Artwork advice
Hi
Looking for some advice, I sometimes copy artwork (usually oil or acrylic) using polarised lights.
What is the best approach regarding curve selection. At the moment I am using the default Base Characteristic curve and applying a custom luma curve which I have mapped to a grey step wedge (values measured using a Colormunki).
The Luma Curve generally has a flattening effect and reveals more highlight and shadow details. At the moment I leave the end points at 0 and 255. However I am wondering whether to have the artists paint me a patch of the blackest paint and one of their whitest, photograph these and set the endpoints to these values?
My method seems a bit convoluted and wondered if anyone can suggest a better way to represent the tones of the paintings more accurately.
Thanks
Kiran
Looking for some advice, I sometimes copy artwork (usually oil or acrylic) using polarised lights.
What is the best approach regarding curve selection. At the moment I am using the default Base Characteristic curve and applying a custom luma curve which I have mapped to a grey step wedge (values measured using a Colormunki).
The Luma Curve generally has a flattening effect and reveals more highlight and shadow details. At the moment I leave the end points at 0 and 255. However I am wondering whether to have the artists paint me a patch of the blackest paint and one of their whitest, photograph these and set the endpoints to these values?
My method seems a bit convoluted and wondered if anyone can suggest a better way to represent the tones of the paintings more accurately.
Thanks
Kiran
0
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See the ICC Workflows another post...
Use 243 and 15. The step wedge you are using may not be without colour casts.
The In Camera workflow will tame your contrast issues.0 -
The concept of IN- Camera profiling [Not C0's Generic profiles] , is lighting specific. It will save you time and your repro work will be more accurate. What you are doing is an old fashioned way of correction-very time consuming. This is exactly where I started. It works if you are prepared to put in a lot of time. If you are using the old Kodak charts, they are not really suitable for the digital age, as they were offset printed in batches and they fade quickly.
You know a lot of this but to recap
Extra Gear may be required:
UV shields
sheets of polarizing material to put in front of lighting
circular polarizers to put in front of the camera
precision made mirrors to ensure absolute parallelism - this allows for wider aperture settings which in turn reduces optical diffraction
âž" one American source is Zig Align ZP4 for 4X5 and 77mmRing Module Adapter for DSLR
âž"Greytagmacbeth Digital Color Checker SG
Note:The less expensive Classic Color Checker can be used, however it produces inferior results
Software to correct for the deficiencies that even the best optics.
Use the LCC profile - shoot a white card larger than the art work analyze and apply profile in CO
Or use another software outside of CO
âž"Equalight
software to make camera profiles;
âž"Pictocolor In Camera and Edit lab
[The concept is that the software analyzes how well the sensor / lens / lighting combination captured the chart and then In Camera creates an ICC profile to correct for deficiencies].
Having a color chart is only one small step. Using it properly is a whole other matter.
Controlled repeatable lighting is necessary to ensure that the White Card and Colour-chart images have identical lighting, exposures and camera settings.
Then every image must be processed exactly the same or non of this will matter.
The good thing is that adopting a good profiling work flow will allow you to use Cast and Equal light / cropping / levelling / and some of the subtle colour tweaks in CO. So most of the work can be done in CO0
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