2 Replies Latest reply: Oct 24, 2013 2:22 AM by JamesJocky RSS

    offset printing of watercolor art

    generalbatzorig Community Member
    generalbatzorig Aug 17, 2012 10:53 AM

      I am a young designer with little experience in book publishing. Currently I am working on a catalog of an artist. It consists of oil paintings and water colors. But preparing the CMYK images for watercolors is a bit tricky for me. There are many watercolors with very subtle tints of color wash, and from my previous experience these light watercolors tend to lose their luminosity after printed. So, I wanted to get a little extra advice on how to prepare the best images for printing watercolors in book.

      There are several different adjustment tools in Photoshop such as Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Exposure, and Vibrance etc. But I don’t know which one is more suitable to make the punch the colors a little more and add a little more contrast.

      If you know any other links in this topic, I will be happy to read more.

        • 1. Re: offset printing of watercolor art
          John Danek Community Member
          John Danek Mar 1, 2012 4:23 PM (in response to generalbatzorig)

          I wonder if you've ever heard of hexogram printing?  You will never be able to replicate a painter's palette using CMYK alone.  Printing presses are limited to the amount of ink they can lay down, but I tend to think you are trying to match some pastel type variants in press.  There are also certain types of paper you might consider.  Paper that will absorb the ink and have some tooth to it.  You do not mention how the images are captured.  Are they digital pics or scans?  I've read your post and I think you need to look beyond Photoshop, a little outside the box, if you will.  There are specialty printers, book printers who specialize in archival type work and do a phenominal job reproducing fine art.  Of course, there are tools in Photoshop that can enhance an image.  You should get Dan Margulis' "Photoshop LAB Color" and "Professional Photoshop".  Very, very good references to optimizing images and they have several different approaches to some common problems.

          • 2. Re: offset printing of watercolor art
            JamesJocky Community Member
            JamesJocky Oct 24, 2013 2:22 AM (in response to generalbatzorig)

            How are the paintings getting onto the computer? Are they being photographed or scanned up? What kind of scanner is being used? Some painting companies photographs better than scanned and vice versa, but usually how the image is uploaded to the computer is a big factor in how it looks on the computer. Other than that all you can really do is adjust the settings in Photoshop. If you had an example I might be able to help you out a bit.