Time for a rant. It’s a blog—ranting is what they’re for. Anyone get as upset as me about the cover on this weekend’s Pacific Northwest Magazine in the Seattle Times? Not the photo—Alan Berner is a magnificent photographer. The entire photo department of the Times is an amazing den of creativity. It’s the production I’m ranting about. There’s no quality control in digital workflow now. This photo is just another of the tons of photos I see daily in print that look like crap, because there’s no one managing the production of the printed image who cares about quality. This photo on the cover--it’s full of digital artifacts from a small jpeg file that’s been blown up too big. The highlights are chalky, the shadows are blocky, there's sharpening halos around the edges. It looks like hell.
In the olden days, back when we all used film, scanning was done by professionals, in specialty businesses called color houses. Pre-press was a dark art. Only specialists knew how to convert a piece of transparent film into a work of art on a printed page that would be appreciated by thousands. The production of photography into print had to pass through a bottleneck, manned by experts, through which emerged quality.
Now, pre-press is thoroughly decentralized, and there is no clear consensus as to whose job it is to prepare an image for publication. Actually, everyone with a hand in the production cycle has the responsibility to maintain quality. And the opportunity to destroy it. Too many times I have been the designated expert on a project regarding color management and digital file quality. And I know nothing. I am the least qualified person in the cycle to have that job description.
I am doing my best to get up to speed so that I can hold up my end of the process. I am shooting only in RAW format so I can learn the basics of tonal control in this new environment. I’m reading the books, and being pretty overwhelmed most of the time. Just as f stops and shutter speeds and focal lengths are an unconscious part of my creative process, I need to be equally fluent in histograms and color gamuts. Wish me luck.
Comments