The Art of Giving

Sandra Noel (www.noeldesigninterp.com) is one of several Vashon artists with a mission that illustrates how artists can make significant charitable contributions without spending much cash. She, together with Clare Bronson and others help out an Indonesian organization called Alliance for Tompotika Conservation (www.tompotika.org). Marcy Summers is the Director for the organization in the USA. One part of the organization's extensive program of conservation efforts is bringing art supplies to Tomptika village on the island of Sulawesi and teaching talented high school kids how to draw. It is a hit and the best drawings become a calendar like the one above.


The artists also teach the Indonesians about larger issues with deft subtlety. They make illustrations for posters themed on messages that are important for the community. This time it was Sandra's turn to make a poster illustration, about litter and recycling (shown below).


Sandra came to Vashon Island Imaging to have a printing file made of her pen-and-ink and watercolor illustration. The image file was going to be incorporated into a poster design file, then have a pdf made to send away for lithographic printing. She had heard from Clare Bronson that we make good 'scans' at Vashon Island Imaging.

Actually, we don't scan at all... we prepare art files using traditional photo-mechanical methods with a digital twist. There are many reasons why this results in better printing than a real 'scan' (unless the scan is made by bazillion-dollar scanners like the Tango drum scanning service available from Dick Buscher at Cosgrove Editions in Seattle. However, getting super-high-quality drum scans is an expensive proposition so not many artists can afford it. They don't need it either because we get superb quality from digital cameras and proper shooting techniques.

The reasons and techniques are spelled out in my book about pixel perfect printing, Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée (ISBN 9780-9865-75112, 272 pages, 477 pictures). Basically, the sensors in good digital cameras do a better job than scanner sensors. Scanners are better for business graphics and the like because they deliver a crisp accuracy and a 'look' that is more 'electronic' than a camera image. Camera algorithms produce a 'faux film' look. That is accomplished with more dithering and antialiasing which make a softer look (that can be sharpened). The softer look of camera pixels is like the softer look delivered by a good giclée printer.


Lithographic printing dots are hard edged, like the top row in the illustration above. Giclée dots are sprayed and look more like the soft dots in the second row. In giclée printing, one lithographic dot is rendered as up to 2880 sprayed microdots. The microdots support super-fine detail. They also support a much wider dynamic tone range because where the spray pattern overlaps additional colors are produced. These 'rare' tones are what give giclée prints a richness and luster unmatched by any other printing process. But Sandra came to us for lithography prepress, not giclée.

Compared to giclée, lithography has a narrower dynamic tone range meaning fewer colors. Fewer colors mean tones that are closer to primaries (ie., less pastel). Narrower gamuts also mean greater contrast. That combination could mean a washed out look if the picture wasn't prepressed to account for the lithographic shortcomings.


The illustration was shot one stop underexposed moving the white point into the gray zone. Don't worry, it is easier and better to drag light tones out of an underexposed picture than it is to restore blown out highlights. Remember, the press is going to make things look 'weaker' because there is a lot of white space between lithographic printing dots, compared to zero white space between the 'dots' in a giclée.

The underexposed picture is restored to proper brightness using levels. Slowly move the white point and watch the image brighten up. Stop when the whitest point in the picture has about 6% ink of any or all CMYK colors (combined). Even the whitest parts of printed images should have some small amount of ink.

The artwork should be shot in daylight at about 5500° to 5600° Kelvin. Here in Seattle our overcast skies are perfect and at Vashon Island Imaging we have a purpose built outdoor-light studio to capture images of artwork. How to shoot artwork is explained in detail in the book.

If you put an 18% photo gray card in the capture (see gray patch in lower left corner of capture above), click the neutral sampler of curves on the gray card in the shot. That will bring the color balance as near to perfect as possible.

With the image brightened it is given the first of two sharpening steps. At this stage the file was still at camera res and it was sharpened using 222 and 2.2 for the settings (threshold zero). Then it was brought up to a 300 dpi image with 24 X 17 inch dimensions, per client specifications... which about doubled the camera res.

The brightened, sharpened and enlarged image was labeled as 'Original' and a duplicate was made of that to play with (labeled 'Color').

The saturation of the Color layer was bumped by 33 points. Then the color balance was adjusted by increasing red in the shadows by 22 point, yellow in the mid-tones by 11 points and blue in the highlights by 11 points. This increases color contrast. Did you know that there are seven kinds of contrast? Read all about it in my book.

After getting the color roughly right various parts took some burning and dodging to get the ink levels right, then the Color layer was duplicated and labeled 'Sharpen' and sharpened a second time...same settings. At this point there was a three layer file... original, colorized, and sharpened.


Usually when you sharpen 'enough' the image will appear a tad lighter. That is because sharpening works by 'outlining' color areas with two-tone borders. Each border is made lighter on the light side and darker on the dark side. The lightening effect is more visible than the darkening. To compensate for that you need to reduce the highlight density (again). You can burn the highlights with about 11% opacity, make a highlight control mask (described in an earlier blog) or simply reduce the opacity of the sharpened layer so that the un-sharpened layer below shows through. Again, the effect is more visible in the highlights. A common setting for giclée printing would be about 50-50, that is the top layer (sharpened) is set for about 50% opacity. However, for lithography you want a sharper image so your setting might be 80% opacity for the sharpened layer. (For AV use the sharpened layer and darken it until it looks good on your display or projection screen.)

By keeping the sharpened layer on top you also facilitate custom adjustments by the next user of the file. That user can control the total look by adjusting the opacity of the colorized and sharpened layers atop the 'original'.

We were glad to help out at Vashon Island Imaging because I have a special bonding with Indonesia and Malaysia after several years producing audiovisuals and images for Malaysia Airlines and Swedish Match (who make cigars in Java).

"I do all work for AlTo for free because of the incredible work they do to conserve the planet specifically in Sulawesi, Indonesia, one of the most ecologically important rainforest and coral reef areas," says Sandra.

You could say that Sandra's artwork keeps on giving even at the lithography shop because by sending along such an 'adjustable' file life will be easier for their prepress artist... (and Sandra will rest assured that her image will print well thanks to good prepress).

Sandra Noel, Clare Bronson and Marcy Summers take the art of giving to the level of 'Zen'. If all artists made similar contributions our world would be even more beautiful than it already is.