[Eric E.]

I'm just a hobbyist/amateur phtographer who just purchased a Nikon Coolscan 4000. I would like to know where in the internet can I find a Color Chart (or Color Wheel) that I can print and have it as a cheat sheet when I'm trying to figure out how I want the color of my images to come out. I would also like any recommendations on books on how to get the most out of film scanners.

I've been scaning a few of my old black & white negatives, and I would like to figure out the RGB or CMYK settings to get sepia and selenium tones images from my printer. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Eric

[buchrob]

You won't find much available in terms of printed color guides and sepia photos, but here's a little test to try that will give you a range of sepia effects and a small on-the-fly education on color spaces.

Take a greyscale photo and convert it to CMYK. Typically, a tone that's about 50% grey will read as 40%C 30M 30Y 10K on the eyedropper tool, because that's the way 4-color process handles greys and undercolor removal.

Your next step is to swap or delete color channels to see what kind of effects you get. Exchanging Cyan for Magenta will give you a reddish sepia. Dropping black entirely will give you a muddy brown.

You can try the same principle in RGB or duotone modes as well, but in my experience working in CMYK mode gives much more predictable printed results.

Your success will vary with the photo and the type of printer you have. Once you have a few baseline prints of your experiments, you can then play with the contrast for each channel independently.

Good luck.

[art_director]

I would add that since your printer is probably CMYK your images should be as well for optimum results.