'Shadows' is a catch phrase for dark tones in PhotoShop® parlance. Having rich darks filled with 'rare tones' brings a giclée to life and gives it 'character'. Deep colors are 'trademarks' of giclée prints, as are 'highlight' details.
Shadow detail is also a traditional problem for printers of all sorts. Keeping life in dark tones is like a razor thin line between over-inking and pale shadows. The secret to getting a good black is to have enough 'rare tones' to define what black is. Rarely do you see giclées in which the dark tones have been fully developed to advantage, which is why I call them 'rare tones'.
The eye can easily differentiate between millions of colors and can see a much wider dynamic tone range than a giclée printer can produce, even though the giclée printing process has the widest dynamic tone range of any other. When you look at a picture your eye scans it, quite thoroughly. Complex and detailed pieces are more 'engaging'. Complex 'rare' tones in a giclée command attention (and appreciation) that goes beyond words for many people.
People have an innate attraction to quality. Nobody knowingly shops for inferior quality... or at least I haven't met any. Everyone wants the best. That is one reason I am so surprised at how 'underground' giclée prepress is. So few people realize that their pictures need to be adjusted for giclée printing output on specific media with specific types of finishes (ie., gloss, satin, matte, etc.).
Virtually all camera and digital-darkroom algorithms involve some sort of averaging. They have to, to be as 'automatic' as people are deemed to want them to be by those who develop the tools. There is nothing wrong with averaging and in fact people take really good pictures these days, compared to the days of film-based imaging. However, the image files we print for artists and photographers at Vashon Island Imaging, and my experiences teaching digital imaging seminars there, have taught me that there is a disconnect between people and their printers.
Most of the disconnect comes from working with PhotoShop®. There's nothing wrong with the program. The problem is that you perfect the picture on an RGB monitor, likely an LCD 'slim' type. You can't easily see 'rare tones' in your pictures because the dynamic tone range of your monitor is narrower than that of a good giclée printer. If you have a CRT monitor you will be able to see much more.
Not being able to see all the colors is not necessarily a bad thing and I know many artists who work in sRGB just to get a punchier set of colors. So be it. However, if you are a professional giclée prepress artist, as I am, you encounter just about everything. (If you're interested, I turned my adventures into a giclée 'thriller' called Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée. It's the perfect bedtime book for the printing geek in your life and you can find out more about it at www.gicleeprepress.com.)
A lot of my own illustration work involves scenes that take place at night. To accomplish my illustrative goals, I had to tackle head-on the printers' two worst nightmares: dark tones and shadows. In the book I go into great detail about how to work up extra rare tones in the shadow areas of your pictures. Here I'll share with you one really easy way to add detail in the dark-tone areas. I call it a 'shadow mask'.
Shadow Masks are made by first copying the layer and separating out everything except the dark tones to be worked on. Invert that layer, desaturate it, set the layer blending for 'lighten' and reduce the layer opacity to something like 2-5%. As you futz with the layer opacity, observe how the mask fills the dark tones, opening them up. This gives you a starting point for a whole range of decision making for which to retain, which to keep working on... etc. When you get it the way you want, duplicate both the original layer and the shadow-mask layer(s) for a new sub-master. You can make colored shadow masks... textured ones... there are many possibilities that are explained in the book.
Another quick tip: after separating the dark tones onto their own layer, use brightness and contrast and way 'overexpose' the layer. Then set the blending options for the lightened layer(s) to 'lighten', erase away the parts you don't want and reduce the layer opacity until it is 'lagom'.
Lagom is one of my favorite Swedish words. It is more a concept than a mere word. Translated literally it means 'enough'. That can be interpreted in just about any way you want... and only you know how much is 'lagom' for the giclée you are preparing to print.
How much you work up the dark tones and the nature of those extra rare tones must be determined by the media your are printing on... how can you best take advantage of -- or compensate for -- the 'total look' offered by the media and it's coating. For example, if dark tones are important to the picture, you'd want to avoid matte finishes as they produce scatter light which 'dilutes' dark tones and moves the black point into the gray zone. Shadows need punch and punch means black. But what is black?
'...the Shadow knows!'
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