Epson 9900 need help (white blown areas)

[hud]

We just got the printer, everything is looking great except the area that are blown out white.  Example: an engagement portrait at the beach, a bit hot here and there on their white shirts. The print just show the WHITE OF THE LUSTRE PAPER (epson) and that looks so bad.

Please, how are you overcoming this?  Via PS?  Any techniques the work the best?  We are trying different methods but still don't have it right.

Any help is much appreciated.

best, jack hudkins

PS:  Epson rep said he could tell me how to do it (company policy) he sent me here to Luminous Landscape.   

[Wayne Fox]

Guess I'm confused.  If the area of he image is "blown"  (255,255,255) then there is no ink printed so you just see the paper.  If these areas are quite large and missing detail that should be there, the image might need some work.  It's not the printer.

[Christopher]

You should try to avoid blwon areas and make them into something like 253

[Dick Roadnight]

¿does the print look good on another printer?

¿are the blown out areas 255,255,255?

I do not like much area over 200,200,200.

¿What camera/software did you use?

If the highlights are blown, these are best fixed in the raw converter, using the recover function.

The highlight recovery and shadow fill functions in phocus are the best reason to buy a Hasselblad for wedding work, as dynamic range=latitude is always a problem.

[hud]

Hi Wayne,

Yes, with today's edgy shooters, for some engagement portraits some areas are blown out, showing Paper Only in the final print.  We are trying to find out what others have done in PS to make the adjustment to 'put alittle ink down' in these blown areas so as not to see the 'paper'.

With our Noritsu we've never run into this issue.

Thank for any help.

best, jack hudkins

[hud]

Thanks Christoper, are your selecting highlights in PS and adjusting to 253?  Will that put enough ink down to not see that white paper?  (using epson Lustre)

I have to say the prints are stunning in portrait prints that DON'T have areas that are blown.

thanks,

jack hudkins

[hud]

Hi Dick, we are printing for other photogs so we don't have access to their raw files.  The give us full res jpeg or tiff.  I'm seeing we have to adjust those blown areas in PS.  On our Noritsu, we don't have this issue.

best, jack hudkins

[Jack Flesher]

>>They give us full res jpeg<<

That sucks.

2 comments:

1) Throw a curve adjustment layer on top of your image and drag the white down to 253 or 252, done.  But if it's a large patch of blown, the best you'll you'll now have a large patch of 252 or 253 gray...

2) Best solution is to tell them not over blow whites during capture or any other part of the processing chain...   Bottom line is blown whites can look edgy or cool onscreen, but they mostly look bad in print...  

[Gemmtech]

Use a dye ink printer!    Unfortunately this is one of the problems we all face with pigment ink and it can only be corrected by changing from white to something less, I have never been satisfied with any result except for coating the print with a clear lacquer.  In printing we take 2 steps forward and one step back, hopefully soon we will have it ALL.  I have tried knocking highlights down to 240 and it just doesn't look right.  Coat the prints and charge a "few" dollars more.

[Dick Roadnight]

Hi Dick, we are printing for other photogs so we don't have access to their raw files.  The give us full res jpeg or tiff.  I'm seeing we have to adjust those blown areas in PS.  On our Noritsu, we don't have this issue.

best, jack hudkins

Tell them they have got it wrong, and you need the raw files to try to sort out their mess.

[Wayne Fox]

¿are the blown out areas 255,255,255?

I do not like much area over 200,200,200.

Wow ... hoping this is a typo.  That means you have nothing anywhere close to white in your image ...

245, 245, 245 maybe, but I can't imagine pulling them all the way down to 200.

[Wayne Fox]

Hi Wayne,

Yes, with today's edgy shooters, for some engagement portraits some areas are blown out, showing Paper Only in the final print.  We are trying to find out what others have done in PS to make the adjustment to 'put alittle ink down' in these blown areas so as not to see the 'paper'.

With our Noritsu we've never run into this issue.

Thank for any help.

best, jack hudkins

Sounds like what you might be seeing is gloss differential then, where the blown out areas have a little different look.  The Noritsu of course won't have that because of the nature of the process, so the same blown area will at least have the same reflectance

If this is the case, there have been a couple of good suggestions ... as you mentioned you just need to pull all of the blown areas down enough to get a slight amount of ink in them.  Another technique us making a color range selection in PS of everything that is above 252,252,252  and then filling that area with something around 250 or maybe even 248.

[hud]

Thanks Sharon,  How are you adding the grain to the overexposed areas?

Any help is appreciated.

best, jack hudkins

[hud]

Sounds like what you might be seeing is gloss differential then, where the blown out areas have a little different look.  The Noritsu of course won't have that because of the nature of the process, so the same blown area will at least have the same reflectance

If this is the case, there have been a couple of good suggestions ... as you mentioned you just need to pull all of the blown areas down enough to get a slight amount of ink in them.  Another technique us making a color range selection in PS of everything that is above 252,252,252  and then filling that area with something around 250 or maybe even 248.

Wayne, yes well said, GLOSS DIFFERENTIAL is the wording I was looking for!  I'm not sure I've done that in PS before, how are you 'range selecting is PS above 252,252,252? And thanks for that helpful suggestion to get rid of this problem. 

best, jack hudkins

[langier]

Fast and easy fix:

Add an adjustment layer "levels". Set the output to about 248.

It will add a little "tooth" to the highlight, about 2-1-1, cmy or 248-248-248-RGB, just enough to add a little ink on my crop of Epson printers.

Not enough fix? go a little more. You've got to test your printer and substrate to determine what looks good/works for you.

On matt surfaced papers, this isn't a problem since there's no gloss differential.

With canvas, if it's going to be coated, not much of a problem, either.

If it's your image, try shooting things without blown highlights, use HDR, use highlight recovery in ACR. There's all sorts of tools, techniques, vision to keep this from happening. The easiest solution is to simply turn on highlight clipping in the camera and watch your exposure.

If it's a client, then educate them about blown-out highlights. Crafting an image usually starts with a great exposure. If the highlight has detail, it's easy to blow-out the highlights if you wish. If you shoot with blown highlights...

[Dick Roadnight]

Wow ... hoping this is a typo.  That means you have nothing anywhere close to white in your image ...
245, 245, 245 maybe, but I can't imagine pulling them all the way down to 200.

A few pixels of highlight at 255 are fine, but i do not like Much Area over 200. In the attached photo I used recover, but I still do not like the very light area on the rocker cover (245,252, 252).

Th top of the Carburetor is a similar shade, but looks right and has more detail

The white tank at the back is about 200,200,200.

This photo I took for a neighbour, when I was feeling really ill, and I did not use reflectors, diffusers, flash or anything clever, but Phocus more or less sorted it out.

[hud]

Jack, on a duplicate layer ctrl/alt/delete plus tilde to select the highlights and then add grain to the selection. This has to be done subtly. I don't blow out huge areas, but sometimes will have a bit of surf that blows out and a little grain helps. I don't let highlights get above 250 and try to keep them below that. I find that otherwise, they look horrible in an inkjet print, as you have found. I often wonder about many of the modern wedding photographs with huge blown areas. I think they must only look good on monitors and not printed, at least not printed on an inkjet.

Sharon

Sharon, thanks a million!!!!   

best, jack.

[pfigen]

It does sound like gloss differential going on here, and rather than lose dynamic range from adding neutral density to the image, just spray it with a couple of coats of Premier Print Shield. That will take care of GD and protect your print at the same time.

For those times where you actually want or need to add grain to the image, it's usually best to apply on a duplicate layer through an inverted luminosity mask - depending on the image anywhere between 1 and 10 or more percent. The secret is to not use too much and then blur that noise layer maybe .3-.4 pixels gaussian blur. Takes the edge off the "grain" and makes it feel a whole lot more natural. This is a technique I've used for years and is especially effective in making large prints from small, crappy stock images. In addition, after applying and blurring the noise through the inverted mask, which puts most of it in the shadows, gradually backing off into the highlights, it's sometimes necessary to to the inverse but at a much lower amount. Grain in the shadows is much easier to take than too much in the highlights

[Neuffy]

Lots of great suggestions here.

I actually _like_ large areas of 255, 255, 255 solid white in my images (particularly low key, but that's an entirely different and somewhat contentious discussion). I generally just print them on matte paper or, as with 90% of my work, on canvas.

My unfortunate personal solution for non-canvas/matte substrates is simply to coat. It's a hassle, but it works.

[Dick Roadnight]

Lots of great suggestions here.

I actually _like_ large areas of 255, 255, 255 solid white in my images (particularly low key, but that's an entirely different and somewhat contentious discussion). I generally just print them on matte paper or, as with 90% of my work, on canvas.

My unfortunate personal solution for non-canvas/matte substrates is simply to coat. It's a hassle, but it works.

If a plain white wall in the background is white, that is OK for me in my pictures, but if the background is Playa Blanka (white beach), I would want to see texture in it.