Craig Stocks
Well-known member
I have a question for the folks who do art reproduction photography for other artists. How do you handle black and white points? Color management is pretty straightforward (I use Lumariver custom profiles) and can get a very good match to Color Checker values. Even matching the luminosity of the grayscale tones is pretty easy.
The problem that sometimes comes up is that the art has very flat tones. I match the Color Checker values but the art looks flat and dull. It's not unusual to photograph a work that only has a 4 or 5 stop range of luminosity. If my goal is to make a print then I just make the print match the original. But if they just want digital images for their records or to jury for exhibitions, what do you do? Do you stretch the tones to get closer to true white and black points, or do you let it look flat?
Note I'm not talking about creating digital records for a museum, simply recording artwork for artists for their own use.
The example here is fabricated to illustrate the point.
The problem that sometimes comes up is that the art has very flat tones. I match the Color Checker values but the art looks flat and dull. It's not unusual to photograph a work that only has a 4 or 5 stop range of luminosity. If my goal is to make a print then I just make the print match the original. But if they just want digital images for their records or to jury for exhibitions, what do you do? Do you stretch the tones to get closer to true white and black points, or do you let it look flat?
Note I'm not talking about creating digital records for a museum, simply recording artwork for artists for their own use.
The example here is fabricated to illustrate the point.