Blown out light areas on Kodak Endura Metallic

MikeK · February 16, 2010

I have a set of shots of "Iridescence" in a storm cloud that I want to print for a gallery exhibition. I thought these would be a good candidate for using Kodak Endura Metallic paper. I got the prints back (16x20's), and the color is amazing, but the clouds were totally blown out, no detail what-so-ever. The blown out area even extends into the rainbow area on some of the pictures. I talked to the lab and they told me this paper is known for blowing out light areas. They gave me a credit so I could tweak the images and try again.

Is this a common issue with this type of paper, have others had this problem?

Is there a good trick to seeing ahead of time the areas I will loose? (The rep said something about pulling down the brightness all the way in PS to see the regions that would get blown out)

Is it possible to 'trick' the paper by darkening the cloud detail a certain amount so the printing process on this paper then puts them back where they should be?

Just wondering if there is a way to work around this issue or not?

The pictures are here so you can see whatI'm working with.

http://www.bourbonstreetphotography.com/Places-Landscapes-and/The-Sky/5372138_8evEE

Thanks!

dmmattix · February 16, 2010

No idea about the paper, have never used it. But the images are really impressive. Where/how did you take them?

Regards,

Mike

MikeK · February 16, 2010

The paper has a number of attributes that enhance the look of the right photos. Certainly not appropriate for everything, but a great effect for the right shots.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the images. I was looking up at an approaching storm cloud (a year or two back, outside my house near Boston MA) and saw an unusual band of light along the top edge of it. I was lucky to have my equipment close by and mounted up a 400mm lens and tripod. Couldn't believe what I saw! I snapped off a number of shots over a minute or two before it dissipated. I did some slight PP to the images to bring everything out a bit, but not much. These are quite close to the original images out of the camera. What you see is what was there.

These shots look incredible on the metalic paper, I just need to experiment to see if I can get the clouds to print and not be a big blob of white...

Thanks,

dmmattix · February 16, 2010

MikeK wrote:

The paper has a number of attributes that enhance the look of the right photos. Certainly not appropriate for everything, but a great effect for the right shots.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the images. I was looking up at an approaching storm cloud (a year or two back, outside my house near Boston MA) and saw an unusual band of light along the top edge of it. I was lucky to have my equipment close by and mounted up a 400mm lens and tripod. Couldn't believe what I saw! I snapped off a number of shots over a minute or two before it dissipated. I did some slight PP to the images to bring everything out a bit, but not much. These are quite close to the original images out of the camera. What you see is what was there.

These shots look incredible on the metalic paper, I just need to experiment to see if I can get the clouds to print and not be a big blob of white...

Thanks,

Thanks, it almost looked like you took them from an airplane. We get storms around here but they are mostly just big black clouds. The interesting stuff we get out here on the plains is the cloud to cloud lightning which can be pretty spectacular. I have never successfully captured any of that but not through lack of trying

thanks again and hopefully someone here has some experience with that paper.

Mike

pathfinder · February 16, 2010

MikeK wrote:

I have a set of shots of "Iridescence" in a storm cloud that I want to print for a gallery exhibition. I thought these would be a good candidate for using Kodak Endura Metallic paper. I got the prints back (16x20's), and the color is amazing, but the clouds were totally blown out, no detail what-so-ever. The blown out area even extends into the rainbow area on some of the pictures. I talked to the lab and they told me this paper is known for blowing out light areas. They gave me a credit so I could tweak the images and try again.

Is this a common issue with this type of paper, have others had this problem?

Is there a good trick to seeing ahead of time the areas I will loose? (The rep said something about pulling down the brightness all the way in PS to see the regions that would get blown out)

Is it possible to 'trick' the paper by darkening the cloud detail a certain amount so the printing process on this paper then puts them back where they should be?

Just wondering if there is a way to work around this issue or not?

The pictures are here so you can see whatI'm working with.

http://www.bourbonstreetphotography.com/Places-Landscapes-and/The-Sky/5372138_8evEE

Thanks!

When I examine your images in your gallery, and check the color space, I do not see a color space listed in the image information. Are these images sRGB, or are they in a different color space, perhaps?

Do you know the pixel values of your white point you set in your image?

I print a grey 255 step scale on a new paper, so that I know precisely how white a step can be and still be discerned, without blowing out, with the chosen paper, and ink. I use this information to set my white point in my image.

I have this image from White Sands with lovely clouds in them that are not blown out on metallic paper from Bay Photo via Smugmug. The reason I point out this image is that it has intense sky colors rather reminiscent of your images.

One trick I have learned is to do a threshold layer in Photoshop near the end of my image editing to check for the whitest areas in the image to see if there are any areas getting near my white point ( the lightest discernible area with ink on paper from my stepped grey scale ) so that I can correct them and then delete the threshold layer before saving the image.

The comment that "the paper is known for blowing out light areas" sounds like they are blaming the paper, and not the image file. Good for public relations, perhaps, but not helpful in correcting the problem.

You can select your sky and steepen the curve in the area of the sky to create a larger, darker gradient of tones in the sky - that will help, but you still need to know how to set your white point for the paper you are using, and that the image file is in the correct color space.

MikeK · February 16, 2010

Thanks for your thoughts!

The images are sRGB. I don't know the white point offhand, I'll have to check.

That's a great idea to print a test sheet on the paper to see how it will actually behave. I will try that out.

On each of the images in the gallery, the entire cloud got printed white. No detail at all. The whole bottom chunk of each print is all white. As a control, I had one of the image printed on Endura Lustre paper as well. This print had all the cloud detail. So does one paper handle whites better, or did they mis-print the metailic version?

Does printing on the metalic paper really blow out highlights to some extent (or a lot), or does this print lab just suck at working with it?

And printing a gray scale reference is a great idea.

Thanks!

Andy · February 16, 2010

MikeK wrote:

Does printing on the metalic paper really blow out highlights to some extent (or a lot), or does this print lab just suck at working with it?

And printing a gray scale reference is a great idea.

Thanks!

Never in my experience. please write our Support Heroes and let us help you directly from the help desk. Make it attn SteveM and we'll have a look for you.

MikeK · February 16, 2010

Thanks Andy,

To be clear to everyone, these prints were not done by BayPhoto or EZPrint. I use a number of labs depending on what is being printed, price-point, and quality of their prints.

If metalic paper does not actually blow out whites or loose lighter end detail as compared to other papers, then I obviously need to send this job to someone who knows how to work with this paper, perhaps BayPhoto.

Just trying to figure out if I need to pull down the light end detail, or if this was most likely a problem with the print lab.

Thanks!!

ziggy53 · February 16, 2010

Kodak Endura Metallic VC is a "high contrast" paper and, as such, any high contrast paper will have trouble with bleaching highlights and plugging shadows.

You can either add a "bias" to reduce the highlights overall (and reduce contrast overall as well) or a luminance "knee" to induce a special curve and preserve more, but not all, of the highlights but still wind up with more contrast overall.

It would be best to apply both treatments in various degrees and then crop and reduce just the problem areas so that they can be printed in multiples on a smaller test print, just so you can see the resulting effects sided-by-side on a single, less costly sheet. Once you know the exact effect required, then apply that winning treatment to the original image for printing large.

Do make sure that the paper is being printed on one of the following:

OCÉ LIGHTJET
DURST
FUJI FRONTIER
GRETAG Net
NORITSU QSS
POLIELETTRONICA Laser Lab
ZBE CHROMIRA

(Those are the printers for which Kodak has tested and has recommended setups/calibration.)

Be sure to view your image on a properly calibrated monitor with the appropriate soft-proofing profiles if you are trying to use the monitor for visual confirmation and visual image processing.

LiquidAir · February 16, 2010

When printing an image with bright or saturated colors, I recommend loading put the target printer/paper profile in Photoshop and looking at the gamut warning. If there are any important areas of the image which are outside the target gamut, you are likley going to have some trouble getting a satisfactory print because the color space conversion which brings your image inside the printer's gamut can have unpredictable and sometimes unpleasant side-effects.

Personally I print those images at home because I can quickly make test prints and tweak the original so that it prints well. You can use Photoshop to look for lost detail using the printer's profile and tweak the file to bring it back, but I find that there is no substitute for test prints when looking for color shifts during the color space conversion.

MikeK · February 16, 2010

Thanks everyone. There were a number of excellent ideas on how to sort out this type of issue before going to the printer or with test print jobs.

I talked with SteveM at Smugmug support and also a rep. at Bay Photo. Neither one thought the metalic paper by itself should be blowing out the whites. Steve looked at my pictures and thought the histogram looked fine.

So I sent off two of them to Bay Photo for a test at 8x10 on the metalic paper. Hopefully they will look fine and I can follow up with the 16x20's that I need.

Thanks!

MikeK · March 5, 2010

Well here's the conclusion. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
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After having several knowledgeable people tell me that metallic paper should not behave badly in lighter areas, I did some test runs with Bay Photo. I started with an 8x10 which came back perfect. Today I got back a 16x20. It is also perfect, with all the cloud detail intact.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I talked with the original lab that I had trouble with and they still insist that this paper blows out whites, even after being told that Bay Photo had no such issues. Oh well, many lessons learned, and the final result is spectacular!<o:p></o:p>
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Thanks all!<o:p></o:p>

Blown out light areas on Kodak Endura Metallic

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