Photographs and articles by A. Cemal Ekin
I have made presentations on printing workflow and making paper choices at area photography clubs, from Connecticut to Maine. After the first presentation, I connected with Red River Paper who sponsored the rest of the presentations. Printing Workflow Presentation A few years back, when I made this presentation at the Photographic Society of Rhode Island …
How is that for a bold statement! But it may very well be true, even if you do it regularly on a schedule. Display calibration and profiling is a must for all digital photographers. There is no escaping that if you want to produce an accurate representation of your work not only on your monitor …
In this final post about split sharpening, I will provide a method of sharpening lighten and darken components of the Unsharp Mask in a way that will allow for changing all the parameters even after multiple saves, edits, etc. (Part 1 and Part 2) Of course, in most instances sharpening will be the last step …
In the previous post in this series, I explained how to separate a sharpened layer into separate lighten and darken components to mask each separately and adjust their opacity. This would allow greater control than keeping the sharpened layer as a unit. In this post, I will show you an even better split sharpening approach …
Towards the end of every year shelves at bookstores, drugstores, and many other places get filled with calendars. Calendars of different sizes, shapes, colors, but not many photographers have a calendar featuring their work. In this guest blog, I will share with you the necessary tools to make a calendar featuring your work and have …
Sharpening digitally captured images in Photoshop, or any other editing software is unavoidable because of the softness introduced in the digitizing process, no matter how good the capture device may be. When we digitally photograph the continuous tone real world, we force the view to be broken into pixels. This brings with it the potential …
NECCC 68th Conference I have just returned from the 68th annual conference of NECCC, New England Camera Club Council. It was an intense two-and-a-half-day affair packed with interesting programs, vendor displays, equipment trials, enjoyable conversation; in short, a highly enjoyable time. This post is about my NECCC impressions. Ran a Pre-conference Workshop I started the …
Ayvalik Meant Olive Oil I have always associated olive oil with the Aegean town of Ayvalik. When I was a child, my mother would buy some brand of Ayvalik olive oil, but Kırlangıç has been the dominant olive oil brand name etched in my mind. Although I had a rough idea about what olive trees …
In two earlier posts, I pointed to a post on MagCloud then added some points that will allow you to finesse the best results from the Lightroom to produce a great-looking printed magazine. Those posts were about the square formats supported by MagCloud. There is still no direct method to produce standard size, 8.5″ x …
In a previous post, I pointed to the MagCloud blog that presented a nice workflow to publish PDF files from Lightroom 4. In this post, I will elaborate a little more on using the existing square templates and try to provide a few fine points of publishing on MagCloud that I have discovered through trial …
I have been a fan of the MagCloud publishing platform for several years since two of my students published the PSRI Focus magazine. Since then, I have published almost a dozen magazines and experimented with their new single-sheet format. Recently, I read on the MagCloud blog that the Lightroom 4 Book module could be used …
You Can Walk Into a Local Photo Lab Of the millions of photographs taken, only a few get printed; that’s too bad. To me, a photograph becomes a photograph when it is printed. Until then, it is a promise. I normally print my photographs on my Epson 4880, which produces excellent prints. However, for some …
I wrote in an earlier post about the printing issues in Lightroom 4. Since then, I have run a series of tests and can say with reasonable certainty that the print engine in Lightroom 4 needs some repair. I realize that there is now a print adjustment option, but that should not be an excuse …
Update: New tests I have run conclusively show the printing issue in Lightroom 4. A few days ago, I printed a photograph from Lightroom 4 (LR4) that came out with a magenta/red cast. Accounting for the possibility of clogged nozzles in the printer, I printed a nozzle check pattern, and everything looked fine. I printed …
Self Print or Lab Print I try to do most of my printing myself. I enjoy the process as part of the full creative control, and I can have the print right away. But there are times when I need to use outside printing services when I want either a paper choice that is not …
See the November 2014 addendum at the end if your version is missing this feature Photoshop has many tricks, but automatically adjusting for the actual screen PPI (pixels per inch) to display accurate print size is not one of them. You need to train the old dog for this new trick. It is quite straightforward, …
This is part 2 of a 2-part series on publishing magazines at MagCloud. If you have not read part 1 please review that first, and review the recommended post before continuing. See the updated profile information at the bottom before proceeding. (8/8/2011) In part one of this series I tried to explain the impact of …
This is going to be a two-part series. Before getting into the second part, I strongly recommend that you read and study my Printing Workflow presentation as it details how to accomplish some of the steps in reasonable detail. Although there are a couple of PDF documents for printing, they do not show some of …
If you have visited this site a few times you probably know about my experience in the dome of Hagia Sophia. I have written a few posts about it, presented photographs and videos, issued a limited edition folio, and had three photography exhibits featuring the unseen corners of the Great Church. Sharing the Hagia Sophia …
I am amazed that many photographers, far too many of them work on a monitor with no calibration, no profiling, and get surprised when they do not achieve the expected colors from their prints. I have made quite a few presentations on digital workflow and have been preaching the importance of color management starting with …
I ran a workshop on January 3, 2010, for the members of PSRI. The main purpose was to explore the sharpening strategies and methods in Photoshop and Lightroom. In the 4-hour long workshop, the first part was some general background information on what sharpening is and why we need it, followed by an overview of …
I have created a folio containing 12 photographs taken from the unique (and generally off-limits) vantage point of the dome of Hagia Sophia. They are printed photographically on metallic paper, which brings out the reflective qualities of gold extremely well. The folio opens with a title page, includes a certificate of authenticity, and continues with …
Workshop Leaders I have just finished the workshop “Fine Art of Digital Printing” with John Paul Caponigro and Mac Holbert and I cannot say enough favorable things about the whole experience. Both John and Mac are extremely knowledgeable about photography, digital workflow, Photoshop, and the printing process; I mean extremely high-quality fine art printing. On …
I have issued a folio of photographs, limited to a total of 12 copies. The photographs are selected from a series that I took on the Kozak Plateau, thus the name of the folio. Kozak Plateau Kozak Plateau is in the Aegean region of Turkey and not far from the historic Mt. Ida. The main …
