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Demonstration
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Common Milkweed collected in autumn
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Asclepias syriaca
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Milkweed has held my attention since I was a little kid. When bloom season was over in 2001 I scanned this dried milkweed stalk that had been ignored, displayed on top of a tall bookcase for a couple of years. At that time I had just begun to explore scanning-as-art. I began with just a cheap eighty dollar office scanner with a very weak editing suite. I had to figure out how to 'balance' the specimen over the glass by levering the stem on a block of clay. All those reflective seed-bearing tufts scanned as pools of white if they touched the glass. After countless trials I got something worthwhile. Another year passed. By now I had more experience and had spent most of that winter developing my Photoshop skills. I wanted to make a few prints for holiday gift-giving. My selected image wasn't quite right, so I re-scanned this same stalk applying my newly acquired editing skill. At least now I could use the clone tool to paint in the detail where the highlights glowed.
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Printing this image was nearly impossible! First the highlights were too green- then too blue. With this image in particular I learned how to modify the unwanted color cast by tinkering with the 'curves' and 'levels'. (Customizing an ICC profile may be necessary as well). Whew... I probably made a dozen test prints before I got one that had the correct tonal balance. Consumer use scanners tend to present a pesky greenish cast that must be corrected with gamma controls. The over-all tone of the image may also depend on the printing paper as well as the ink/pigment transfer....and last but not least, the illumination of the room it will be displayed in. Always, always review your print work against a neutral white background in natural daylight (5000K). It was important to maintain a velvety 'charcoal' black background. A black background can be very tricky to control. My first preferance was to mount the image behind a black mat. Often the side-by-side blacks do not match exactly. If this is a problem I'll spray the black mat a blacker black or a more neutral black with a matte Krylon spray paint. This demonstration shows how I cheated by applying a faux mat designed in Photoshop.
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Seeds at actual pixel level
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The fake mat... shhhhhhhh....it was simple until I decided to get ambitious and challenge my artistic competence. Notice the leaf that "floats" over the mat? Well, that was a snap. Then I got this scary idea that I'd like to have this itty-bitty stray seed blow across it. For a solid week I tried over and over to select then isolate each of those silky plumes. I did everything- zooming in to pixel level and removing the background pixel by pixel; scanning the little buggers on a real mat....finally I ended up painting the darn thing... uh, I mean electronic painting on a transparent background. Lastly adding dropshadow to create realism. No, I painted that shadow in! Wish I'd known that all I really needed was a $2,400.00 scanner!
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