Getting ready for a show

My company is having an employee art show from June through the end of July. I'm submitting four prints.

The end in mind.

I started with what I wanted the hung images to look like. I was trying to balance the cost of materials and artistic expression. As we are also having to sign a "will not hold responsible" clause, I decided to not spend a lot of money on framing materials, particularly if my company would not cough up some dough in the event that some art is damaged. I wanted to hang 16"x20" images. I really like museum glass, but decided to skip it for this show. At ~$40 for a 16"x20" sheet, it adds up quick. I used to like wood frames but have I switched to Dick Blick Gallery Metal Frames. They are inexpensive, durable and it's easy to recycle them for other shows or switch out images around the house if/when you want a change. Add museum glass and I think they look fantastic. With matte prints, it almost looks like there's no glazing. (One of my friends tried to touch a print to see if there was glass.) I printed B&W images on Lexjet Premium Archival Matte with my Epson 4000 and MISPRO inks utilizing Quad Tone RIP. As QTR doesn't come with Lexjet profiles, I used the Ultrachome and Epson Enhanced Matte profiles, linearized them and made a few test prints to get the tones right. The image sizes are about 11"x17" on final paper size of 16"x20". I made creative frames / borders using paint and ink on paper and scanned them into photoshop. Prints are backed by acid-free foam board and placed in frame without mat. The image frame / border takes the place of the mat in terms of a visual window. The lack of a mat gives a very clean appearance in my opinion, not to mention that it saved a lot of time in framing up the prints.

Framed print ready to hang.

I had actually been planning for this show for a while. I've been attempting to get my printing work flow with an Epson 2200 and UT-3D inkset in place prior to making prints for the show. I wanted to print on glossy paper. I still have not been able to adjust photoshop curves in a way that gives me satisfactory control over print tone. It's amazing what necessity drives us to do. After fooling around with the 2200 for 2 weeks, I had a short amount of time to put together framed prints. Thus, the 2200 was abandoned (for now) and prints were made on the 4000 with QTR.

A lack of organization

I've spent the last two weeks trying to get prints together. It's been an interesting experience. I have no cohesive portfolio of images and I haven't been using tags, keywords or ratings in any of my photo organization programs. It became quickly apparent that my submission was going to be made up of disparate images. I realized that I have to get some sort of management system in place. I've installed a couple different programs to handle this task; Bibble lite, Photoshop Elements album, Picasa and the Canon software that camer with the camera. I like Bibble, but Bibble lite doesn't support the 5DMkII. Bummer. They still have not come out with Bibble 5 for commercial release. (It was supposed to be out in January 2009, slackers.) Picasa is my favorite, but it can only export as jpeg. Photoshop elements (my old version) doesn't suport RAW. The Canon software just stinks. What to do? I'm actually taking a "digital arts media" class at a local JC this summer. As a student, this qualifies me to purchase the full version of Photoshop and Lightroom at a substantial savings. I'm hopefull that Lightroom will really help me catalog and sort my images and I can move to just one system and remove the other programs. I'll probably keep Picasa for quick edits and exports to Blogger.

Some conclusions

1. I need to settle on program to organize my photos and clear the rest off my computer. Along with this, I need to go back through all my old images and add tags, keywords and ratings to make searching more efficient. This jumping between programs to browse, develop and then edit is too much. Adobe pretty much has a strangle hold on this department. I think I'll be going with lightroom and photoshop in the future.
   
2. I need to get rid of the multiple printers and inksets. As much as I like the idea of a pure carbon inkset for longevity, I don't have the skill to manipulate the software in a way to control print tones to my satisfaction. I probably need to move closer to a ready made solution for black and white printing, at least in the mean time while I develop the necessary skills.