The Stock Photographic Image —
       How do you know when its good for printing?

n      © 2001, Don McKay professional photographer, graphic designer

As the Internet has grown by phenomenal leaps and bounds, so too have various outlets supplying whatever it is a graphics person may need. Stock photography sources on the Internet are popping up everywhere, it seems, offering countless images on just about every imaginable subject.

To the trained, experienced eye of the professional photographer and graphic designer, many of the images being offered for sale are nothing more than tourist snapshots, usually of inferior photographic subject matter and sub-par image quality. I kindly refer to this type of material as junk shots. Its stuff that no one would pay any kind of serious money for.

Stock photography of the so-called economy nature is almost exclusively distributed on badly exposed and badly color-corrected slide duplication film; where the original 35 mm slides were not properly cleaned, nor blown with air to remove dust before the duplication exposure was made. If the image is to be distributed via Internet download or on a CD, of course, any and all visual garbage will be included. Other telltale signs of such sub-standard work are badly composed settings, crooked doorways, arches, windows, tilting horizons, terrible lighting and, in general, an overall infusion of pure ugliness. This kind of stock photography is best left to the hobbyists to utilize for their own purposes.

Better stock photography can include 35 mm slides when they are made into superior quality slide duplicates. One has to be quite sure about their source of supply in this case, because no matter how it appears to the human eye, the slide duplicate does not possess the same degree of density as does the original 35 mm slide. This is particularly true in the case of an original 35 mm Kodachrome 25 versus any duplicate made from the original. Also, a particularly noticeable gap between original and duplicate can be seen when comparing the new breed of Ektachrome and Fujichrome 35 mm slide films and any subsequent duplicates. I am stressing the duplication factor, because anyone selling a prime image never sells the original slide or transparency. Everything sold is a duplication of the original. Unless, that is, a special purchase arrangement has been made with the originating photographer.

Its the next step up in film format size where we can, comfortably, get by with transparency duplicates. [When were talking 35 mm format film, we say slide dupes (duplicates). Larger sized formats of film, we say transparency duplicates or dupes.]

A well lighted, properly exposed and properly developed original 6 x 6 centimeter (that includes 6 x 4.5, 6 x 7 and 6 x9 cm) format transparency film (Ektachrome or Fujichrome) can be duplicated very faithfully and if done by an expert technician, will be difficult to tell the duplicate from the original. The quickest giveaway will be the frame numbers on the edges of the original transparency.

Surprisingly, and this does come as a surprise to many, a 6 x 6 cm transparency often presents a superior image when it is enlarged to fill a 4 x 5 sheet of Ektachrome 6121 transparency duplication film. How can this be? Well, in the enlarging process, the technician is allowed some latitude in which to dodge and burn otherwise troublesome areas in the original image. Also, if the overall color is off a bit in the original, the technician can, by using filtered light, make color corrections to the duplicate. Right about now the reader might be asking, How come you're not directly contact printing the original transparency on to the duplication film? Wouldn't that give you the sharpest image resolution? It would, indeed. And, it would also give you trapped pieces of lint, dirt and air borne dust between the two films and there most likely would also appear Newton Rings disturbing, visual, circle-type waves of surface-to-surface pressure interference.

Also, there is the matter of grain and contrast that may be objectionable in the original transparency. A sheet of 4 x 5 duplication film is virtually grain-free; more so when its projection-printed using a diffusion color head enlarger. Even with a 40-power enlarging focusing magnifier, it takes the sharpest eye to discern any grain. Whereas, when viewing the original transparency under high magnification, film grain is quite evident if you know what to look for. Transparency duplication film (Ektachrome 6121) lessens the grain found in the original and does so because duplication film is not a contrasty film. It can be made to have more contrast in the developing process, but as a norm, duplication film is quite flat. It has to be, otherwise we wouldn't have much of a chance in duplicating higher contrast original transparencies.

Duplicating colorful, somewhat contrasty 4 x 5 original transparency images is a relatively easy process as long as the technician has a firm understanding on the color correction filtration process and exposure times. On the other hand, duplicating soft, diffusely lit, limited color range original transparencies is where the amateurs are separated from the professionals. When an original transparency image is made up of a predominantly 18% gray background and the subject matter is, say, a white plastic object with rounded edges buckle your seat belts, folks, because its going to be a bumpy ride in the darkroom. What I just described is the toughest challenge in transparency duplication. And, in some cases, the duplication film does not measure up to the task. Many times, there may be difficulties in achieving the same contrast as the original (although, sometimes, the necessary contrast boost can be achieved in the processing cycles first developer stage). There may be a case of the white plastic object looking correct, but the 18% gray background has shifted to green, cyan or magenta. There is one positive way to work around this dilemma and Ill get into the techniques of transparency duplication in a later writing.

Now, we come to the critical question: How do you, the graphic artist, know when you are in possession of a top-quality transparency duplication you purchased from a stock photo house? Unless you've actually made a few thousand transparency dupes, or have been responsible in shelling out huge amounts of money in past purchases of stock photos do not fully trust your eyes to tell you whether you've got a top-notch, quality transparency. If you've just paid $500 for a photo image, you'd better believe your eyes will lie to you. Its a self-defense mechanism type of thing. We call it visual rationalization.

Illustrated here are identical images, except one is the correct exposure. Image A is fully saturated with color and the overall density is quite high.

This picture could be used for four-color separation and produce a reasonable printed image. However, it is very likely the deeper shadow areas half-tone screen pattern in the stem and leaves would plug and fill in with black ink during the press run, losing most of the detail in the final printed piece. The definition in the flower petals would remain and be very visible, but the whiteness of the petals would look dull and, possibly, even muddy.

If the client for whom the flower is to be printed desired to see more detail and less contrast in the leaves, then someone is going to have to go in to Image A and do some extensive image editing so that any and all alterations will look natural. That will add to the overall cost of the photographic image. That would be the stock photo charge + the image editing correction charge. This could end up being a very expensive stock photo purchase.

Image B represents a properly exposed transparency, where the lighting on the leaves reveals more detail and green color. The overall image has been brightened with the proper lighting and some of the high-key areas in the flower have been retarded so as not to completely wash away the veining in the petals. What has been done with the exposure and development of this image is to leave high-key area detail in tact so that the half-tone separation process will at least have something to hang a dot on to. In addition, the darker shadow areas have much more definition that will be captured during the separation process. This transparency would not require any image enhancement. There are no added charges to be tacked on to this stock photo purchase.

An educated purchaser of stock photography would have known enough to reject the Image A and ask for a more evenly exposed and lesser saturated image like Image B. If the stock supplier could not remedy the problem, then the designer would know enough to adjust the over-all charge to the client that is, if the client was adamant about wanting this specific flower image and alerting the client as to the cost increase. Issues such as Ive just described have to be discussed with the client or the designer will have an interesting time explaining away the extra $250 - 500 charge for image editing.

Hard as they may try, no single image sold by a stock photo house is going to satisfy every purchaser of that image. Obviously, the stock houses cannot afford to produce varieties of custom printed and processed transparency duplicates to satisfy everyone's taste. So, if graphic designers are serious about coming up with the just right image, there's going to have to be image editing done in house. Most larger design firms have come to grips with this issue, gone out and purchased their dedicated Macintosh G4 with a Gigs worth of RAM, two or three 21 monitors and a Nikon CoolScan 4500, 4 x 5 sheet film scanner. (If your shop can afford it, always go for a 4 x 5 scanner because you're going to look foolish trying to scan a 4 x 5 transparency in a 35 mm or 6x6 cm film scanner. And believe me, there a hundreds of millions of 4 x 5 transparencies out there.)

A design shop having its own image editing set-up will enable designers to combine multiple images to make one master composite digital image. Its done all the time. However, what isnt done all the time is to take the final digital image and write it over to Ektachrome Electronic Output Film. If done correctly, the resulting original transparency can be absolutely breathtaking in its color, saturation and resolution. Many photo studios today are completely bypassing using conventional film during the shooting session. Instead, they are placing the likes of Phase One and Leaf^TM digital imaging devices on the back of their cameras (in lieu of film) and sending the images directly into Macintoshes with Photoshop installed. Once the image (or images) have been digitally altered, or combined, then the data is dispatched to an ImageWriter where the master 4 x 5, 5 x 7 or 8 x 10 transparency is created at a scan resolution ranging from 6500 lines up to 10,000 lines per inch. There isn't a human eye going that can spot those lines and the digital masters four-color scan beautifully.

Now, what's the fastest and most economical way of producing 300 duplicates of the master digitally-created transparency? Answer: By using the conventional transparency duplication method. Writing one original digital transparency is quite expensive. Writing 300 would cost a fortune in money and time. So, its best to just dupe the original; and believe me, digital masters duplicate better than original conventional film transparencies.

Hopefully, the reader has been given a better insight as to the image and film quality of stock photography. To repeat when you purchase stock photo images on film, you are never purchasing the original image. You are purchasing a dupe. To learn more about transparency duplication and the photographic imaging business in general, visit my website at www.donaldnealmckay.com - F-Stop Photographic.