I’ve never made a secret of my frustration with digital negatives. Yet, they also appeal to me, for the obvious reasons of consistency and as a crucial means to marry digital imagery with analog/alternative printmaking. For something like color carbon, I consider digital negatives the only feasible way to go – but man, are they fickle. In this blog, I’m going to try and list the options, although frankly, I have no solution yet that I feel comfortable with. Maybe getting it off my chest and structuring the whole thing will help some.
Continue reading “Whither hybridia – The challenge of digital output for alternative printing”Tag: inkjet
Color carbon made feasible, part 1: halftone screens
In my previous blog post, I outlined a couple of tough challenges I met in the color carbon project. These challenges are partly inherent to the carbon transfer process, and partly stem from working with digital negatives, in particular continuous tone negatives. In this blog, I will outline the two main components to a solution to these challenges: halftone screen negatives and sensitizer-incorporated tissue.
Continue reading “Color carbon made feasible, part 1: halftone screens”Easy way out – Inkjet on ‘DIY’ papers
No, I haven’t given up on color carbon yet. But as I was messing with the inkjet printer anyway, making hundreds of digital negatives and greyscale tests, at some point I got experimental in that direction as well. You see, the thing with inkjet is that I just don’t like most inkjet papers. They’re very high-tech and offer great gamut and dmax. But they don’t have much subtlety to them and the paper surface is always lifeless to me. The exception is the (rather pricey) inkjet baryta papers that indeed resemble fiber-based B&W papers. But couldn’t we expand our choices a bit, perhaps by trying something ourselves? Well, turns out, we can…read on!
Continue reading “Easy way out – Inkjet on ‘DIY’ papers”