There's nothing more satisfying than producing a giant giclée and nothing more nerve wracking than watching it slowly work its way through the printer. Everyone knows that things can go wrong and that can be an expensive proposition when you are printing and finishing very large sizes. Such was the case last week when I set to work on a new illustration of my own called Lavender Moon (shown above).
Lavender Moon is a 48 X 36-inch giclée made to be the centerpiece for an exhibition of my illustrations at the Vashon Island Chamber of Commerce. That show features works from the Vashon Island Collection (which can be seen in the Fine Arts section of my website at www.mesney.com).
The centerpiece of a show should be the dominant picture at the exhibition, the one that pulls people in. Usually it is the biggest picture. Its environment should determine the size of the centerpiece. In this case the 48 X 36-inch print feels huge in the Chamber offices, hanging on a wall that is 12-feet wide, even though that is not a large print in the world of murals.
Shows need centerpieces. They are like billboards, attracting people from a distance. Shows without centerpieces have more passers by because only those close enough to see the pictures are attracted to them. The bigger the pictures (in their environment) the more people they will attract.
Although we print a lot of shows for artists and photographers at Vashon Island Imaging, it is rare to make really big giclées because a.) They are expensive and b.) Few venues have sufficient wall space. So making a 4-foot by 3-foot Lavender Moon was a rare treat... one that re-tested my mettle as an artist and professional giclée printer.
The challenge derived from the viewing situation at the exhibition. Lavender Moon would be viewed up close (from as little as 18-inches away) so it had to be flawless and have plenty of details that viewers who look closely could discover. Details make the pictures more interesting and memorable. For example, in Lavender Moon there is a tiny but complete spider web in one of the flowers (upper right).
It took about a week's worth of 12-hour days to make Lavender Moon. That wasn't intentional but you know how things go when you get interested in something. The process was more painstaking than most because of the detail required to fill the big canvas. At one point the file size was more than 6 gigabytes and my less-than-totally-new 'art' computer was choking. I was on tenterhooks during the super long saves. The slow, painstaking process had side benefits however.
One of the main benefits of the long production cycle was simply getting familiar with the picture. Spending a lot of time with a picture really helps you see its problems. This picture went through three compositional iterations and the third didn't occur until the sixth day. The finished picture is completely different than the one I set out to do. Originally, the picture was to be a 1:3 ratio panorama. Instead it ended up being a 3:4 ratio piece.
The changes occurred as details were added. The details changed the 'importance' of certain key visual elements and upset the balance within the composition. It became harder and harder to maintain the necessary triangulation in the panorama format, so the picture got more and more square.
Details Influence Composition
Working out the 'geometry' of a composition isn't always easy and can frequently change as a picture evolves, as was the case with Lavender Moon. When there are lots of visual elements it becomes more challenging to show them all in a pleasing and harmonious way. A 'circular' scheme based on triangles within triangles works the best.
Good compositions keep the eye moving around within the picture. Pictures with a single point of interest are simple compositions. Pictures with two points of interest produce the 'tennis court' effect as your eye bounces back and forth between them. Three interest points (or more) allow for triangulation, which is in my mind the key to good composition. Triangles create the 'circular' eye movement within the borders of the giclée.
One big difference between the composition of paintings and illustrations compared to photographs has to do with 'focus'. Photographers frequently use soft focus or selective focus to call attention to points of interest. However, paintings and illustrations are generally 'in focus' because it's hard to paint 'out of focus'. As a result the compositional options open to illustrators and painters are limited to subject matter more than technique. (Airbrush artists may consider themselves excused from that assessment.) That was certainly the case for Lavender Moon.
When I was a lad learning how to be a lensman my visions focused on Pete Turner's wide-angle work, Ryszard Horowitz's surrealistic detailia, and Canadian portraitist Yosef Karsh's moody lighting. As my own style emerged from the shadows of those giants it was based on a wide-angle point of view and all the detail that comes with it. Selective focus has never really been my thing.
Working with wide angle lenses makes you work harder to put together a good composition because everything is in focus, so everything is equally important in that sense. Making one thing more important than another becomes a question of its size and position in the picture relative to the other elements, as well as the degree and nature of its illumination in the scene.
Now of course photography has been turned upside down and inside out by digital technology. Many former photographers have evolved into photo-illustrators because it is now so easy to assemble new pictures from pieces of others... a technique called collage work by most and traditionally known as 'photo-assembly' or 'strip-in' work in the printing trades. Just about every illustration I make is a collage and Lavender Moon is a prime example.
Size Matters (The Bigger The Better)
Collage work involves the assembly of pieces from several pictures to make a new one. Lavender Moon is a collage of 44 picture elements. Many of the pieces were other collages to begin with (for example, the Olympic Mountains in the background and the spider web) so the total is well over a hundred elements in the scene.
Photo retouchers and collage artists know that it is best to work large and then reduce back down to repro size in order to minimize the visibility of their assembly work. With that in mind the master image of Lavender Moon was made to print 10-feet wide by 8-feet high at 240 dpi. It is doubtful that anyone would ever want a giclée that big, but the real reason for working so large is to insure high quality at more popular smaller sizes. I try to work at 200% scale. Since the giclée for the exhibition was originally to be 60 X 45, the master was made 120 X 90. (Later we decided that a smaller size would fit better on the Chamber's wall space, so the 48 X 36 for the show is 40% of the master, with incredible sharpness and detail.)
If you've ever tried to do collage work you know that there's more to it than meets the eye. It's kind of like trying to make a new jigsaw puzzle out of pieces from several others. There's a lot about how to do collage work in my book, Giclée Prepress - The Art of Giclée, but the gist of it is that all the pieces need to be made to look like they belong together, sharing similar contrast, color range, grain, 'focus' and detail. Everything starts at the edges.
Getting an Edge on Collage
To get good edges work on a picture that is twice as big as you are planning to print. Assemble all the picture elements on separate layers and scale them up to their new sizes and positions in the composition. Then cut each picture piece out of its background. Do that by selecting the part you want and erasing the rest.
To make the best selections use the Pen tool to make a 'Path' and then convert the path to a 'Selection'. Remember 'connect the dots' pictures? This is just like those except you make the dots too in this case, using the Pen tool. The more points you plot, the smoother and more detailed the path will be... and it follows that the better the path, the better the selection.
The best paths are plotted are large magnifications. Zoom in to an 800% magnification and make path points at least every half-inch on straight lines and gentle curves. On sharp turns use many more points. Consider that at 800% magnification dots that are 1/2 inch apart on your monitor are actually only 1/32nd of an inch apart in the image file.
To be honest I don't always work at 800% but I try not to dip below 500% because if I do it's going show in the edges of the collage pieces. The question is, what level of quality is needed in the edges in order for them to become invisible at viewing distance.
Once the path is complete convert it to a selection then expand the selection it by 1 pixel. In some cases you may be contracting the selection but the idea is to crop a bit further in on the subject. Then feather the selection by 1/2 pixel. Finally, select the inverse and delete it, leaving your picture element isolated on its own layer.
At this point the basic edge work is done. Later, when the piece is in situ you will likely need to do a bit more work, blending certain edges better by using the Eraser or various Blending Options (read on).
Uniform Looks
The various pieces of the new picture must look like they belong together. Here we can take a lesson from school uniforms... each student looks individual when you get close, but from a distance all the students look the same. And so it goes with photo assembly. Uniform visual qualities among all picture elements help pull a collage together. The uniformity is achieved by using these tools:
- Levels (with or without Brightness and Contrast)
- Hue & Saturation
- Color Balance
- Sharpening (or Blurr)
- Noise
For each isolated piece of the picture use Levels to adjust the overall look of each piece to work together with the others. Try to avoid using Brightness and Contrast unless the black or white points need to be moved (making white a shade of gray and pushing dark grays into black).
Then use the various color controls as needed to adjust the color and contrast of each piece so that it fits in with its neighbors. (All this is detailed in the book and is really too complex for a blog like this... for example, did you know there are seven types of contrast?)
Texture and 'focus' are the next issues to deal with. The pieces should all have the same kind of 'grain' and sharpness. If some elements are enlarged much more than others this will be more difficult. However, adding various amounts of noise to different elements can help even them out texturally.
Unsharp Masking and Blur tools helps too in some instances, especially for pieces that have different degrees of enlargement. Try sharpening some and blurring others until you get a more balanced look. (Have you tried 'Surface Blur'?)
Restoring Color 'Density' after Sharpening
Sharpening can start to make a picture element look more pastel because of the white and black edges that the algorithm creates to fake focus. This paleness can be eliminated or at least reduced as follows:
Duplicate the layer before sharpening, then sharpen the lower of the two layers. Adjust the upper (un-sharpened) layer's levels to 1.22 or so and set that layer's blending options for darken. What this does is partially fill the white borders with a pastel of the color that was there before sharpening. This is what I call 'creative sharpening' ... as opposed to the 'technical sharpening' done to an image just before printing it (again, see the book).
A 'Light' Touch for Soft Edges
Soft and wispy edges present special edge-blending challenges. It's hard to get good blends using any of the selection tools or erasers because those edges are actually 'see through' in reality... like smoke, wisps of hair, etceteras.
Edge blends between pieces with such soft edges are improved by doing the following: 1.) Make a duplicate of the offending collage piece and set its layer blending option for 'lighten'. 2.) Position the lighten version on top and erase away the edges of the original version beneath it in the offending areas. The same can be done using the 'darken' blending option on another copy of the piece.
Scratch and Page File Management
When you are working on big pictures the scratch file will keep getting bigger ... the one for Lavender Moon expanded to more than 30 gigabytes while the paging file ascended to more than 2.2 gigabytes. This can really slow things down for you and may make certain operations impossible (even saving!).
To begin with, make sure that you have a nice big partition on your hard drive for the PhotoShop® scratch disk. I usually assign 30 gigabytes for the primary scratch drive partition, with another 20 gigabytes available on a second partition.
The same holds true for the paging file (the Windows® system 'scratch disk'). We run Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional here at Vashon Island Imaging and the paging file is set for maximum (4,095) on its own 8-gigabyte disk partition.
Even with sufficient disk space there can still be problems when you work on giant giclées because there is simply too much information and the system starts choking. There are several things you can do to avoid problems.
1.) Minimize the number of history states (we use 20)
2.) Take periodic 'snapshots'
3.) Periodically save your file and restart PhotoShop®
The last step is the most important even if it is a bit Draconian. However, closing and restarting the application keeps the scratch disks and RAM useage as trimmed as possible. That is because no matter what you do to a picture, PhotoShop® 'remembers' the version you opened. Thus, if you periodically merge layers and save, then reopen with the newer version with fewer layers, PhotoShop® won't bog down.
Printing Management
Once a picture has been finished in PhotoShop® then it is time for prepress... adapting the file for the media and printing machine. To be able to control the image on the printing press you need to be able to control each of the primary colors and and the overall lightness and darkness (ie., the amount of black).
Lavender Moon has three dominant color zones, the orange sky, the blue flowers, and the greenery. These zones need to be individually controlled. Thus, the printing version (15.4) has the following layer arrangement:
Bees
Sun & ray burst
Foreground & background flowers (blues)
Background greenery (green)
Sky (reds)
A series of test prints were made from the original printing version (15.1). The first was a 14 X 18-inch size to determine the overall color and contrast range adjustments (15.2). This print sent me back for more prepress because the blues were printing way too dark... the kiss of death for this picture. The second test print (15.3) was one size up, 20X24. That showed the need for still more color balancing as well as some edge blending work on a few of the key pieces, particularly the lead bees. Some further color work was done to differentiate between the highlight colors of sun-kissed flowers compared to those in the shadows (15.4). Lavender is funny that way... the sun brings out reds that disappear when shadowed.
The chances to work on a picture like Lavender Moon only come once in a blue moon so every moment was relished whether painful or not. As the saying goes, 'no pain no gain'. Another saying is that 'you're only as good as your last picture'. That is why now, for every one, I 'shoot the moon'.
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