Theory of Practice: Technical Papers

This page lists a series of short papers in the PDF format abridged from my workshop lectures covering various topics in the implementation and application of digital processes to contemporary fine art photographic practice.

•  Monitor Theory:
A short paper on the theory and practice of monitor calibration for fine art photography.

• Soft Proofing Theory:
An outline of the theoretical factors determining the limits of soft-proofing simulations with workflow solutions to the most common errors and misunderstandings.

• Camera Profiling:
A discussion of the methodology, workflow and colorimetric advantages of custom calibration and profiling of Hasselblad H System cameras.

• Notes on Reprographic Photography
A collection of recommendations and observations on the digitising of cultural and biological collections, including quality control, verification, camera alignment, lighting, diffraction, and depth of field considerations.

•  Print Luminosity:
Notes from 1980 on my relationship to foundations, structure, harmony and subject that matters.

•  Live Picture:
My original Live Picture workshop notes (last revised 2005). Live Picture is a resolution independent real-time imaging program that runs under the Macintosh Classic operating system. Though Live Picture was commercially discontinued in 1999 I continue to use it as my primary image editing program.

•  Four Compositions:
A schematic of my digital image editing workflow theory.

•  B&W Contrast Filters:
The calculation of digital equivalents to Kodak’s Wratten Filters and their implementation in preparing digital B&W fine prints.

•  Editing Out-of-Gamut Colours:
An L*a*b* based method for the local perceptual compression of Relative Colorimetric (B2A1) ‘out-of-gamut’ transformations.

•  Luminosity Mapping:
The conversion of multi-channel images to a single greyscale channel is based on a luminosity formula, which in turn is based on a theory of perception. This paper examines Photoshop’s methodology and why desaturation and other conversion formulae do not always produce the expected perceptual result.

•  Toning Monochrome Images:
A luminosity masking method for toning digital images so as to emulate the ‘look, feel and presence’ of toned silver gelatin fine prints.

• Epson Printer Profiling in Mac OS 10.6.x
Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and Photoshop CS5 have rendered it difficult to correctly print ICC profiling test charts though an Epson printer driver. Theses changes to the Macintosh print path have also resulted in printing irregularities in previously established workflows. These notes explain what has happened, how to correct this problem, and how to identify that the solution is successful.