100MP GFX100S - Printing a big B&W fine art print - full workflow - from image to paper

Hello, my name is Keith Cooper North. Light

image

s and in this video I'm going to show the process that I went through to create this black and white

print

ed

image

of a tree. I'm going to go over it in relative detail. Covering the basic process, but the key elements are that I took the photo with this Fuji gfx 100s. Now this is a 100 megapixel camera, it's medium format and it's produced as one of the images I took when I went out. testing the camera for a review. I liked the image and thought I'd make a

print

for that in particular because I'm trying out some new

paper

s for the Epson p5000 printer and this particular

paper

is an Innova paper, it's a glossy exposure cotton. 335 grams so it's quite a heavy paper, it's a roll paper and I printed it in black and white and I printed it using the ABW print mode, that means I could get pretty much identical results if I lived on an Epson p900. on this one or p700 with smaller paper or if you're using Canon you'll get very similar results using the black and white print mode on the Canon Pro mil for example, but on this one in particular I'm going to try to show some of the aspects. from the actual image file I got the photograph was taken with a 23 millimeter F4 lens here it is an old heavy lens it is a very high quality lens now I have mentioned a little about the quality of the image itself and how the image was processed image, but really this is all from taking a photograph, uh, some of the exposure influences that I did when I was testing the gfx 100, part of looking at it was realizing that, with the sensor that it has, I have to change my focus to expose images slightly now.

I have been making landscape prints for years and am actually considering this gfx as a potential replacement for my 50 megapixel Canon 5DS. Now obviously there are more megapixels, but that's not really a big difference, it's not that much of a megapixel we're talking about here, although it makes a difference, so the image itself is an oak tree in some woods, yes, in Leicestershire , and this is the real photo, so to speak, off camera. Now I took raw and JPEG and I'm working with the raw files, this is what the jpeg looks like, as you can see there are some small bits of Sky peeking through but most of it is pretty black now, normally with the older cameras that I tried it, I would have been very cautious to expect any usable details in these dark areas, but it turns out that the type of image sensor this camera has has a lot more detail in the shadows or more to the point, it doesn't have as much noise as I might have expected, so it means that I have to change my processing a little so that the image is very dark and no adjustment has been made.

If I look at a section of the image here, we can see bits of Sky peeking out and I've exposed it at about 80° of a second I think it was f8 F9 something like that so it's been exposed so the sky doesn't burn out. I have a little color in the sky. I could also make a perfectly good color print of this, but this is specifically. for black and white, here is part of the tree, now look, it's not much, you can see when I change the raw settings. Now I'm using Adobe Camera Raw in the current version of Photoshop in this example, you can do something similar with Lightroom here.

If I took the photo, I took it at 100 ISO, if I took it at a higher ISO setting and I was worried about noise, I found that dxo photo lab handles the images from this camera very well and handles the details that it handles. noise, that's just that's Photo Lab 5 because I can't try Photo Lab 6 because it doesn't run on any of the Macs I have, my kit is too old I'm afraid, but there's the difference you can see. It's pretty clear the difference between the out-of-camera image and the image after adjusting things a bit. In fact, looking at this, you can clearly see that it is an oak tree.

Now I have to look. I have to put something stronger. You wear glasses to see this in detail, but I can clearly see the shapes of the oak leaves against the sky. This print I think this one ran at about this size, at 550 odd pixels per inch, that's a very high resolution. Now I know that printers like this p900, some of the other printers I've tried can take a higher resolution than what the standard 300 pixels per inch is supposed to be. You could take the highest resolution and it is visible in your prints. I have videos about that.

I've written articles about it, but suffice it to say that sending more resolution than necessary is beneficial. Here now, that's the impression. How did I get to this image from this well? I changed it, this is the color, so now I have a nice color image. I'm going to open that image as a color image and use the Pro Photo color space, not because I'm worried about out-of-gamut colors and such, but because I want to maximize the amount of information that's in the color file for when I convert it to black and white, there are some details of the leaves and you can clearly see the detail of the oak leaves, the shapes were just in early autumn, so I have some leaves changing color, but it's not really an autumn scene if it had been a more obvious autumn scene.

I might as well have produced a color version of this image just to highlight the colors because the gfx works great for that now I could I took this photo with my Canon 5DS, yes of course I could. I've been doing this for years. I am a professional photographer. Yes, I could take this photo. I would have to be a little more careful with my exhibitions and what I do. I could get away from this and I wouldn't have the level of detail for it, but yeah, don't think you need a camera and a lens like this to take it, it makes it easier, but you don't, so you know, there's a lot of detail here. .

I have that color. This is the color image. I have increased some things. I increased the color intensity a little. I haven't really altered it much. I have pressed it. We're a little bit overexposed here in the development by about two and a half stops, so it's quite pressed and I don't see any real camera noise in the files. I should say there is the image after I got a color image now, if I printed it as a color image I would probably highlight some of this area here to bring out the color. There are some leaves.

There are masses of acorns everywhere. This tree obviously has. I produced a lot of acorns this year, there are plenty in these woods, but I have the details there. I could make a nice color image from them but this is about black and white in the process I will take so there the color image as produced has been converted now there is a different version what have I done good? What I am actually is like the software offers you various lens corrections and lens aberration corrections abert now both lenses, the 30 ml and the 23 mil, there is a practically no chromatic aberration, however, the 23 mil is a wide angle lens on a medium format sensor, so when I add lens correction, there is and I'll come back to it to show that the lens correction stretches the corners a little bit now.

What I've noticed before when shooting with wide angle lenses is that you often decide the image looks a little better uncorrected. Now I left the chromatic aberration correction on, it's not really necessary, it's tiny amounts, but I turned off the correction that expands the corners and gives it a real wide angle look. I also disabled the lens vignetting control. I have to say that the correction bullet control is why I've done it because very often I don't necessarily want to get rid of it. Vignetting now is nice to be able to adjust if necessary, but I don't want the image to be completely bright in the corners.

If you're making a print, sometimes a vignetting control allows you to draw attention to the print a little better. It's a matter of experience and I wouldn't say for all lenses to turn off the correction, some lenses really benefit from it, but with this lens I like the look of the image and that's the structure of the leaves, the branches and everything in the slightly uncorrected version. I'd better write the corrected version, so the only correction I'm applying here is to get rid of any chromatic aberration and as I said, that's practically insignificant, yes, it's an English word, practically impossible to see it in one or two parts if Look very care

full

y at a fraction of a pixel or so for very small color fringes, but there is a color image anyway, what am I going to do with it?

Well, now I'm going to turn it into black or white for this example that I used. The silver neck effects now connect to the neck, a black and white conversion. I've used it for years since it first came out and I don't use all the presets, except maybe just to get an idea, there are relatively few settings. I have done here. I've altered the tonal balance a bit to get a better impression and increased the structure a bit to give a bit more differentiation to the branches as they come out. I'm going to get lower contrast in a print than I see on the screen anyway, so as long as the screen looks good, I'm pretty happy with that.

Now all Nick Silverfx controls can be altered, you could modify them. I would do it. I say I don't tend to turn the structure up too much as it produces a slight halo and if there's one thing I really don't like it's the halo on Stone in black and white images like this, you'll have seen it. where there's a tree or a lamp post or something sticking out into the sky and because of the adjustments that have been applied in the processing it has a kind of slightly slight halo around it or something like that once I see it I can't stop seeing it and It's something I don't like, so I use Nick Silverfx here.

I could equally have used a channel mixer or any number of different approaches to create a black and white image. The key is that I am working on a calibrated monitor that is good for black. and white and for color so I'm working on a calibrated monitor here so the tonal balance that I get here is what I'm going to expect in a print if you want to be doubly sure of things and this one here I have I have a background neutral gray around the image and this is a screenshot of when I was actually working and doing things.

If you want to do that, you can make it white like it would look on a print because the background color makes a difference in how. the images are certainly noticeable if I were to map this and not put it on a white mat if I framed it and put a mat around it if I used a darker colored mat the image would look brighter now this is something you just have to practice a little when

printing

because the look of a print is heavily influenced obviously by its editing and all that, but it's also influenced by the environment.

Now that I have printed this on roll paper, there is a 17 inch roll of paper that I could have printed on one sheet. I would love to see what this image looks like on a much larger printer. There is real detail and structure to this image and after looking at it I need my strong glasses to really get the impression of this. He told me that I would really like to see this as a large print, but this is the largest printer I have here at the moment, next time I do some testing with a larger printer, I will definitely reprint this image using the paper I chose.

By the way, this is the exhibition bright cotton. This is an Oba free paper, so it is a slightly warm paper. It is not a bright white paper. The slight warmth I find helps make an image look a little more natural than a bright white. You could choose a brighter white paper as your type of images or a warmer color, so it depends on the image to some extent for color images. Yes, normally I'll choose the brightest one, but for the black and white here this is as close as I can get. tone or tint an actual color option down, so there is the black and white image.

I've modified this with the sliders here, not long ago, doesn't need much, most of the tonality was taken care of in the original raw conversion, could do that if you're using a tool that had localized adjustment, you might want to clarify a few of the darker areas here to show a little more detail, but I'm happy with what I have here, like most things I find, the more work I do. I have to do it on an image to get a print that I like better. I take this as a clue that it may not be the optimal source image.

Excellent source images are very easy to work with. I have had excellent impressions that have taken a long time. of work, but in general all my best prints, my favorite prints are the ones that really haven't required a lot of work to achieve the conversion from out of camera to a print. Now, this is looking at some details in this and here. I've added a bit of sharpening to print now that I've used since getting the following software. I have used knit Sharpener 3. Now I am using just the output sharpener. I have greatly reduced the intensity of the output sharpening, so that I can't see any halo or obvious sharpening effect, I now do it.Sharpening is obvious on the leaves here, but it's also obvious on the tree trunk as there is sharpening in the dark to medium detail, so it only enhances the contrast.

I haven't added any additional structure or anything like that, so with this form of sharpening you could do a normal print sharpening. You could use something like print sharpening in Lightroom, for example, and it would probably give you pretty reasonable results for this now. I don't particularly like Lightroom for

printing

for a lot of reasons, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it as a useful tool. A bit of software that some people like, but I'm going to print this from Photoshop, so I applied a bit of print sharpening just to bring out the details and that detail sharpening is visible in the print, if it were a larger print it would be more visible and it might change a little bit how I handled the sharpening but for a print at this size from a 100 megapixel image there's not a lot of sharpening I need to do, I need to get rid of some of the basic softness, but there's nothing, no big job, like I said, start with a good file, it's a lot easier to work with less effort to do it, so how do I print it right?

I'm just using Photoshop's simple print dialog, that's all, I said. printer manager color because I'm using ABW mode now to test this paper and I have a review of this paper specifically coming up. This is, shall we say, show bright cotton, one I have known for quite a few years. it has a light texture so it has a semi-gloss look to it it's a nice feel to the paper it has a nice rich feel to everything you produce on it so I've made I'm printing this when I print it uh with the settings of the printer with the maximum resolution of the printer 2880, the maximum detail of the printer that on this particular printer on this paper gives me absolutely perfect results.

If I were printing this on a p700 p900 I would be wary of using the highest print quality settings because I have noticed from testing it and I have reviews and from looking at this I have noticed that they are very high quality settings on the p900p 700 than on some Papers can produce a little tanning, now on this one there is not the slightest sign of tanning which is one of the reasons I have liked this item for years. I put notes on the various things I've used in this. If you look at the video notes, I'll add some.

There are details there, but there is the printer manager color printing dialog anyway. If I were printing this on a Canon printer, I would use Canon's black and white print mode. I don't need any other adjustments because I know the print mode is relatively linear, so I'm not going to have shadows or any issues like that, but if you're printing it in black and white and you don't necessarily know how linear the results are from black and white print mode, you may want to print. something like this a little smaller to see that the print itself doesn't lose all the detail in Deep Shadows here now in terms of paper science, it runs on a roll, so I specified a custom paper size of 430 by 600 millimeters, that is, 43 centimeters. 60 centimeters and we have a little more here.

I do not make custom sizes for each paper. I normally shoot with a slightly different aspect ratio, so this is a four thirds ratio sensor, it's not the same as the three to two ratio, you get the standard 35 mil, so it's a Slight difference I've allowed for in this, but this prints one perfectly and anyway, if you're going to print roll paper, you should have a decent cutter anyway to trim your prints. To size, the printer cut it when it came out, but if I was framing this, I would trim it a little bit more and use it that way, so that's the custom setup, there's the actual print, there's a photograph of the print. now I will crop this and along with the others in the video so you can get an idea because in photographs the exposure is perfect, it is quite complicated to show impressions and print details in a video, now the color should be pretty good because I have had some Be careful with the lighting, but I can never be sure of the tonal balance, so we have a photograph of this print here taken earlier using a flash and we have the details here of that image for me. this screen looks like the print, so here we go, just showing some details, now there is some graffiti, it's a few millimeters wide on the actual print, deep in the rocks at the bottom, here someone scratched some initials or something on the rocks.

These rocks are some of the oldest rocks in England. um, this is in the Charnwood area and their fossils have been found here. Eddy Karen Fossils, so certainly some of the oldest fossils in Europe were found not far from where I am here, so it's an area that I know from one of my previous careers as a geologist, as well as a place that is a nice forest to walk through so that's the detail there and there is a photograph once again of the actual print part that shows some of the detail in the leaves that drew me to the image when I started looking at it so here we go, There's the tutorial for how I made a print, it's actually quite easy, there's nothing particularly complex about what I've done in making this.

Printing in black and white involved getting a good image to start, deciding how to process the raw file, then taking that processed image and converting it to black and white. Now there are several different ways to do this, but yeah, the technique I used. with silver effects it works well. I don't always use it, but when it works well it works very well. I took the image. It's a huge image, so I haven't needed to resample it or do anything. I just did it well. Well, let's print that and at the size that it is, I say about 560 pixels per inch, so a pretty high resolution I want a little bit more sharpness just to bring out some details that kind of offset some of the softness. of the printing process and the reduced contrast range you get here and between what you get on the screen, so I did it.

I used the printer's black and white print mode. I used a good quality paper and just pressed. I printed and it came out, so, as they say, that's all there was to do now. I hope it is of interest and you know, please ask questions if you have any. um I just have this print, this camera here for In a short time I have the printer here. I'll be doing a little more on this particular role and another similar one. I'm taking a look at both papers that I've used for years and really like. they just suit the images I produce and I'm comfortable with papers and that's something you might want to think about if you print a lot but anyway thanks for watching and please subscribe to the channel if you find it useful and I'll say please . just ask those questions I appreciate it so thank you