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Specialist Papers - Permajet Digital Transfer Film - Epson MetallicProof - part 3 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2012

Permajet Digital transfer Film

Many people consider that the only prints worth investing in are silver halide monochromes, indeed there is some reflection of this in the auction catalogues. Although people have invested thousands in hand-manipulated Polaroids (which they could never have on display) the fact that the manipulating hand was Andy Warhol's might have had an influence on the bidding! For many reasons then, silver halide, and perhaps platinum prints, are more sought after than other forms of photographic media.

Once inkjet printers became good it was not long before darkroom printers started to dabble with creating contact negatives made on inkjet printers; at the time the world was awash with clear overhead projector film, the standard vehicle for making presentations. There are advantages to making digital negatives because the power of Photoshop can be brought to bear at the negative-making stage and then creating multiple, limited edition prints is far simpler than the rather hit-and-miss hand dodging and burning. Also the creative montaging that you can do with Photoshop far exceeds what even the most skilled darkroom worker can manage and this offers a direct route to a wet chemistry output.

A number of manufacturers provide a digital transfer media but we tried the Permajet version. They provide good instructions to get you started and essentially the process consists of:

1. Convert to Greyscale (Image>Mode>Greyscale)

2. Ensure image is at the correct size @ 300dpi (Image>Adjustments>Image Size)

3. Invert image to a negative (Image>Adjustments>Invert)

4. Flip image horizontally (Select>All, Edit>Transform>Flip Horizontal)

We made a reasonably good-looking negative at the first attempt and although we can no longer take it right through to wet printing, we measured the maximum transmission density of the negative as 0.5, which was a bit weedy, but should be capable of producing a usable working negative.

There is plenty of scope for experimentation. For example we achieved a 'clear negative' Lab luminance of 93% when inverting the image from greyscale but only 85% when inverting from RGB. There are many ways that this can be manipulated. Lambretcht and Woodhouse's book Way beyond Monochrome has a good section on refining negatives (and remains the best book we have ever seen on monochrome photography!). In this they discuss the use of curves to influence the transfer function of the negative-positive pair for optimum results - such things will go right over the head of younger readers but were once the stock trade of monochrome printers!

As with MetallicProof, making digital negatives is hardly a mainstream activity but the image makers of previous generations never allowed the relative scarcity of their endeavours to unduly influence their creative drive - think outside the box and work outside the box you never know what might turn up!

STOP PRESS

As we went to press PermaJet announced that they have a new digital negative transfer film with improved performance and properties (it is now a clear base and has enhanced sharpness). More about this when we have tested it!

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1st Published 01/04/2012
last update 09/12/2022 14:56:42

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