changing conditions Archives

The perfect light setup for post-production (1)

Intro

The lighting environment is as essential in printing as in post-production. As a newcomer to the subject, you rarely get a really good overview; hours of research are often necessary, including specialist websites, with a lot of technical jargon. To make it a lot easier for you, I did a short interview with Paul Santek about this important topic.

So Paul, how did you learn so much about lighting, press, and color management?

Through my educational background and technical interest, I find it really easy to dive deeper into those topics and suck up everything I can find. Including scientific stuff e.g. knowing how a photo spectrometer (= a device for color measurement) works. The best way of learning was to compare articles and books with fundamental scientific theses. Talking with other professionals also played a huge role which worked best by being interested in their work.

Let’s start with the actual interview and talk about the room conditions for the light setup for post-production: How should the room be designed? How can we minimize unwanted influences and guarantee neutral conditions? (e.g. clothing, windows, color furniture, etc.)

It’s really simple: Get rid of everything colorful which can reflect or filter light. Examples would be toned curtains, wearing pink shirts, and a red wall behind the screen / between two desks.
At first glance, a room with almost no color seems a bit boring. However, if you train your eye to see the smallest light color casts, you would notice someone wearing a red shirt entering the room because the color changes – even if the entrance is behind you.
If you want to introduce some more or less colorful things into the post-production office like plants, or pictures, … think about the location and the color spill. Do you really need a plant next to your screen, having green color in your viewing field all day long? An alternative to that could e.g., be to take breaks and get out of the office for a few minutes and give your eyes some rest and yourself some fresh air.

*Pro tip: Women work less efficiently with gray walls (psychological effect)

If you look around in your office as an image editor — which conditions and lamps are critical, and which ones need alternatives? // Which conditions would be intolerable for image editing?

Critical and important lamps are those which directly brighten workspaces. Like the one above a desk, those above a cutting/viewing desk, and the one above a printer.
In my case, the one above the printer is the least critical one as I examine prints on my viewing desk.
It’s also mandatory to have stable conditions. If it’s a sunny day or if it’s midnight, the room should always be almost the same.
Just to get you an idea with some numbers:
Above my computer desk, there is a daylight lamp with two 58 watts tubes with every 3350 lumens and D50.
Above my viewing desk, there are 4 lamps (two rows, each 3 m long), each with two tubes with 3350 lumens. The rows are separately switchable to be prepared to have one row with D50 and the other one with D65 tubes or to adjust the brightness to the work I do like cutting and examining prints and samples all day long where I have all lights switched on. On the other hand, if I’m wrapping parcels to get prints shipped, I’ve only one light switched on as I don’t need full brightness for that task.

Intolerable conditions for our light setup for post-production are:

The background behind the screen is too bright (e.g. window)/too dark or too colorful.
Plus, lighting conditions that change over the day like direct sunlight in the morning and then being in a dark shadow until the afternoon when the sun shines into the office from the opposite direction.
And wearing pink shirts – proofed by my girlfriend: she wondered why every image had a color cast until she took a break and realized that she was wearing something pink. That’s why I always wear black or dark, neutral shirts when I do color-critical work.

Let’s assume, we could design the perfect lighting setup from scratch and have an unlimited budget. Which standards and norms are decisive for the choice? Could you elaborate on them?

If the budget is unlimited: Hire a company doing all the light planning like “Just Normlicht” etc. Here it’s important to get e.g., certificates or measurements of light distribution, and spectral distribution of light compared to the D50 or D65 standard.
But for most of us, the budget is limited…

Which manufacturers and alternative solutions would be possible depending on a specific budget? Where do the price differences come from? What do you have to pay attention to when it comes to cheap alternatives?

If the budget is limited, the first thing is to avoid cheap LED and other ‘daylight’ bulbs. They may have their white point somewhere around 5000 – 6000K, but they are missing the correct spectral distribution, including UV light. That results in printed colors being visually off or optical brighteners in paper having no effect. Paper with and without optical brighteners could look similar.
Get some D50 fluorescent tubes like Osram Color Proof or Philipps Graphics and a white fixture with mirrored reflectors. Those reflectors help to distribute the light where it’s needed. It’s important that you get a light distribution diagram with the fixtures so you would know what you get. And set your screen to the right brightness and white point. Those tubes have 5300K (D50) or 6500K (D65), including the UV spectrum, to fulfill the industry requirements and standards.

What would be the optimal choice of lighting objects, divided into must-haves and optional purchases?

Must-haves: Daylight D50 / D65 bulbs, white/gray or near neutral colored walls, maybe a viewing booth (depends on clients/work specifications). If you have to refresh the paint on the walls, get a paint without or really few optical brighteners.

*Pro tip: Always check Ra or CRI numbers for bulbs/tubes. They are supposed to be >90 for perfect color rendering.

Optional could be a viewing booth (e.g., Just Normlicht), a proof printer from Epson or Canon with proofing paper, or special wall paint colored neutral gray.

Which watt or lumen number is important when buying? (15W = 100lm = dark; 300W = 4000lm = bright)

The watts and lumens from a bulb are not that important. You must get enough light on the desk and in the room to have it bright enough during sunshine hours and not too dark when the sun has moved away. For example, I’ve got around 6600 lumens / 126 watts above my desk, and that’s bright enough to minimize the change over a sunny day — it feels like sitting in the sun. In the end, it’s all about the distribution and control of the light to minimize reflections and bright or dark spots around workplaces. That minimizes the continuous adaptation of the eyes to changed surroundings.
In my first office, 3300 lumens were enough because the room was not that high and smaller, facing to the north.
I’d try to get my screen to around 100 ~ 120cd/qm and then adjust the light in that room, although it’s easier the other way around. Put some lights on the ceiling and adjust the screen brightness to that light. A gray card should be near a neutral gray on screen.

Now we also have the choice of light color in our working conditions. As a note, we also have to consider this when calibrating our monitor(s). When is which light color advisable, and is it even advisable to change? Does it depend on the images that have to be edited and the requirements of the client?

As a rule of thumb: If you work in print and graphics, get D50 lighting; if you have to design objects and choose a paint, then get D65. Sometimes you have to change the lighting when proofing. If you have to, I guess someone will state that in a brief, or it’s documented somewhere, or someone tells you something about it.

Where would you not cut corners or never compromise when buying lights?

I’d never ever buy mediocre LED lighting, even if they are way cheaper and consume next to nothing energy-wise. Don’t get fooled by advertisements or reviews. If you don’t get data sheets with measured values or a spectral distribution of light, you’d better save that money. They have a horrible spectral distribution of light, and they could flicker with the double mains’ frequency.

What would be the last step once you have bought the lamps, have the lighting conditions in the post-production room under control, and calibrated the monitor? (e.g., gray card, 100cd/qm at the monitor)

I’d never buy mediocre LED lighting, even if they are way cheaper and consume nothing energy-wise. Don’t get fooled by advertisements or reviews. If you don’t get data sheets with measured values or a spectral distribution of light, you’d better save that money. They have a horrible spectral distribution of light, and they could flicker with the double mains’ frequency.
After everything is set up and working correctly, the last step would be to get a cup of coffee, sit down, think about the situation, and reassess if there is anything left out or forgotten. And then, of course, test drive everything with critical colors and maybe ask someone to have a look if you’re not sure about something. The last step is to set up the monitor brightness to a level where neutral grey is shown as bright as a neutral grey reference next to the monitor.

Are there any further options to optimize the viewing conditions while editing?

There is not much more one can do. A good point is to allow your eyes to adapt to the light for about 30 minutes. Take breaks, and don’t overstrain your eyes and body in front of a screen. Learn to see the slightest color casts.

Did you have any other experiences — real-life learnings, so to speak, that you would like to pass on?

There are quite a few. The most important are:
Never try to examine if a calibration result is good enough if you have several ‘light’ sources and output devices displaying the same image as printed. Especially if you try to estimate if the print profile is good enough by eye, and you have both a calibrated and a not calibrated display in front of you. Everything will be off, including the calibrated display. Switched off the uncalibrated display, and everything was fine.
Don’t try to calibrate a screen to a specific Gamut, except you have to because of company guidelines or soft proofing for a large printing press with a smaller gamut than AdobeRGB.
The soft proof will not work with fine art inkjet printers unless there are screens with a way larger gamut than AdobeRGB (because printers can have a larger gamut – depending on the used papers and inks – than high-end displays with AdobeRGB).
If you want to use the brightest and most intense colors an inkjet printer can produce, use ProPhotoRGB. I’m happy to share some test prints if you don’t believe that. A good resource about that is the profile white papers, including the math for color conversions.

With which sources and specialist literature can you deepen your knowledge, divided into beginners to professionals? Is there also a YouTube channel, a podcast, or an audiobook on the subject that you recommend?

If you really want to dig into that topic, try to read and understand some whitepapers on color.org. There you will find information about color conversions (yep, the math behind that magic!), proof conditions, etc. And there is a good collection of knowledge from Bruce Lindbloom on brucelindbloom.com.
Don’t try to take shortcuts; they will get you everywhere except in the right direction. As lighting is a part of color management, get confident in that field, and stay away from people who can’t / don’t want to share resources or prove their statements.

Outro

Thank you, Paul, for helping to improve the quality of image processing. What is the best way to contact you if people want to produce printing projects with you?

I like to get in touch with people, so the easiest way is to call or write a short email to mail@fineartprint.pro, whatever you prefer. More info on https://www.fineartprint.pro

Make sure to check out part 2 and 3 as soon as these are available on our blog page.
Do you have any suggestions or additions, is this post out of date, or have you found any mistakes? Then we look forward to your comment.
You are welcome to share this post. We are very grateful for every recommendation.

Photography in the time of early COVID-19

As 2020 reached its dramatic conclusion, and the world approached the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, websites and publications all shared a similar content strategy: curate the most harrowing images from across the globe that depicted life turned upside down. The visuals captured moments from hospital ERs, overwhelmed funeral homes, lonely and isolated home lives, overworked essential workers, and traditional events rendered anew in the face of public health protocols. National Geographic, in its January 2021 issue, asked, “How did photography capture such a year?” It swiftly replied that our digital culture made photojournalism one of the most significant tools of documentation.

Seen through that lens, it’s easy to think of photographers and photojournalists as the truth-wielding, emotionally wrenching, cultural arbiters of our time. But photographers themselves have been impacted immensely in the past year. While images flooded our screens with daily depictions of distanced lives, professionals behind the cameras were challenged to flex new skill sets, reimagine their income sources, and simply find a way to make it all work without the regular opportunities to fund their lives and careers. Here were the cultural arbiters of our time, tasked with turning water into wine.

“The photo industry is still struggling to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic after being hit hard last year,” Rangefinder Online wrote in a March 2021 article that summarizes a Zenfolio survey of professional photographers. The survey found that 63 percent of photographers saw a 40-percent decline in business in 2020 due to COVID-19, and almost 78 percent saw a decline of at least 20 percent. Not surprisingly, wedding photographers reported the hardest impact, and landscape and fine-art photographers reported the least.

Still, for an industry that offers as much cultural impact as it does today, a whopping 68 percent of photographers are seeing their business slower than expected in 2021. So, how have photographers been coping?

The Pivot

It’s safe to assume that few professionals are tasked with “thinking outside the box” as often as creative professionals. Seeing and operating differently than the norm is part of the job (or calling, if you prefer). When life itself was upended around the globe, photographers found themselves needing to pivot on a dime to stay afloat financially.

Refinery29 took a closer look at how 29 photographers were responding to the moment at hand. In Milan, Italy, Lucia Buricelli wrote, “I can’t wait to go back to photographing outside. I am really interested in documenting how life will have changed in the streets after this situation.” She added that the circumstances call for photographers to break out of their comfort zones. “Even if we are confined and limited in our spaces and contact with other people, we can always find a way to produce something cool.”
German photographer Julia Lee Goodwin echoed that sentiment. For the past four years, she is working as a fashion photographer. But when lockdown orders took hold, she pivoted: “Now, with no access to a team, I threw myself into shooting food, trying to translate my eye for fashion photography into still-life shooting. With this project, I created a typology as a study to see the way your eye is drawn to subjects depending on light, coloring, and layering.”
English photographer Ana Cuba found herself with a new approach to visual documentation as well. “I take a walk every day between 6 and 7 p.m. when the sun is really low, and I take my film camera with me,” she responded, adding that the habit has prompted her to pay closer attention to where light falls. “When I get to the park, the sun is gone from this beautiful, huge lavender plant, so I’m going to leave earlier today to try to get a nice photograph of it. Kind of makes me happy to have a tiny purpose like that.”

A new perspective?

How-to blogs and articles sprung up to guide photographers towards new revenue streams. Vallerret, a Norwegian company that designs premium photography gloves for cold-weather shooting, published a blog titled, “How to survive as a photographer through Covid-19 when all your gigs get cancelled.” With tones of encouragement and sympathy, they recommend that photographers consider selling photos online, putting together a photo book, harnessing the power of social media through YouTube and TikTok, creating a virtual course, and selling image presets.

Similarly, Toronto-based photographer and digital artist Alana Lee sought to soften the economic blow for photographers through a similar blog post. She wrote, “By using the resources and skills you already have, you can diversify and create new income streams to keep your small business running!” She recommends lending photo editing and retouching skills to businesses with marketing campaigns, and hosting virtual photography sessions. She also advises that photographers move their business online by selling additional images to clients from past sessions, selling photography stock and digital assets to sites like Shutterstock and Getty Images, and rendering their prints as wall art.

Are these drops in a bucket that will usher photographers into a new industry level, or is this simply photography in the COVID age? It depends on whom you ask and who’s up for the challenge. Lensrentals found, in an April 2020 survey of more than 1,000 photographers, that 18.6 percent were considering a new line of work altogether in the face of such challenges.

The New Reality

At present, the world is slowly re-emerging from the isolating stillness of quarantine, and reckoning with the devastating fallout from COVID-19. Vaccine distribution in Europe, North America, Asia, and South America has offered glimmers of normalcy on the horizon — or rather, a new reality.

The fashion industry has been steadily making its cautious return, and the lingering side effects of the pandemic still pose a number of obstacles. Fashion photography, after all, needed to pivot just as much as other creative professions.

A Vogue Business feature shed light on the different ways brands have been executing their marketing campaigns and promotional efforts. Truest to the traditional fashion shoot, Brooklyn photographer Mary Fix has managed a skeleton crew alongside a stylist, makeup artist, and model, and followed a number of safety protocols. She also introduced a new photography method of photographing models over FaceTime with an iPad or iPhone, which caught the attention of Victoria Beckham Beauty and resulted in a partnership.

In other situations, brands scaled back their on-set roles and asked models to perform the styling, lighting, and dressing themselves. The Vogue feature includes model Daphne de Baat’s insights on the new norm: “One client took the time to go over everything with me over Zoom, so I was prepared [to wear] a bunch of different hats… I just didn’t anticipate how much work it was going to be.”

Some fashion photographers have found their presence altogether eliminated because shoots are not a viable option for the time being. Drapers wrote in an April 2020 article that fast-fashion brands like Asos, Boohoo, and Zara invested in their trusted influencers, tasking them with snapping photos of their garments at home. The publication remarks: “The results are impressive. Although — naturally — less polished than a professional photoshoot, the content remains aspirational and appealing. Seeing product worn in bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens feels both more intimate and more relevant to consumers stuck at home.”

Marketing photography isn’t entirely lost to the quarantine mandate, though. Public health guidelines from governmental bodies have been filtered through various organizations to get professionals back to work. The Association of Photographers (AOP), headquartered in London, recently outlined protocols that affect every aspect of production, from contracts to casting to managing sets to catering and transport. The protocols are sweeping, detailed, and comprehensive.

The AOP didn’t graze over the challenging realities of being a photographer in the COVID age, either. Among other guidelines, they offer recommendations from a perspective that seems both familiar and sympathetic. They suggest taking a break from the news cycle for the sake of your anxiety, avoiding social media message boards, and keeping in touch with friends and family to “feel that bit more connected,” among other pearls of wisdom.

Similar to the how-to-pivot-your-business blogs, they issue guidance on remote working, cancellations, and managing existing and current work. They implore, “We suggest that now more than ever, you do all that you can to keep hold of your own cash — if clients want something paid for, upfront, for a commission, you really need to make every effort to get your client to advance you that amount, or for them to pay for it directly.” From top to bottom, they communicate a desire for photographers to take care of themselves so that everyone can get back to the business of photography, of documenting reality — of capturing life itself.

The future, of course, remains to be seen. The world may very well have no choice but to adjust to new realities, and life will fall in line accordingly. Zenfolio’s survey reflects a few anticipated outcomes, all a little different in their own ways: one-third of photographers are optimistic about business between now and June, one-quarter of them expect their business to continue to decline, and 50 percent expect it to take at least a year for business to return to normal.

Regardless, let’s hope that enough photographers haven’t lost their momentum. History, as it is written in the present, relies on their vision.

Do you have any suggestions, additions, is this post out of date, or have you found any mistakes? Please let us know. We also look forward to reading your own experiences in the comment section. You are welcome to share this post. We are very grateful for every recommendation.

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