Blown-out white and blocked-up black in your photo print

Monday 16 May 2022, 22:44 by Nando Harmsen | 5,095 views | 10 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

We don't want blown-out white or blocked-up black in a photo. It can sometimes seem as though everything should be in the midtones. I don't mind having either one in a photo. But I do need to pay attention when printing a photo.

Who's afraid of red, yellow, and blue. You may know this phrase. It is the title of the paintings by Barnett Newman. The title is based on Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which in turn is based on the Disney song Who's afraid of the big bad wolf from 1933.

I would like to add one: who is afraid of pure black and white? I get the impression that a great many photographers are afraid of them. Just pay attention to how often people say that a photo contains blocked-up black and blown-out white.

Night photography is a typical type of photography where pure white and pure black can appear. But then the question is, does that matter? I don't think so. Unless it is pure over- or underexposure of your subject, in which case it does.
Is it a problem when pure white or pure black is present in a photo? I don't think so, as long as it is a conscious choice. You don't want blown-out white in important areas, or blocked-up black for that matter.

For less important areas, as far as you can call them that in a composition, white or black is not a problem at all. Look at the great masters of photography, and see how much blown-out white and blocked-up black they use.

I'm no great master of photography, but black and white are perfectly acceptable in a photo.
However, if you are going to print, pay attention to these areas in your photo. Not so much for pure black, but certainly for pure white. To understand this, we first need to take a quick look at printing itself.

When we print, at least three ink colours are used. These are cyan (C), magenta (M), and yellow (Y). Combining these three primary colours makes it possible to create all the usual colours. We see these three colours in the abbreviation CMYK.

The K in CMYK stands for Key, which is simply black. And yes, you need black for all the greys in your photo. Most printers often have even more colours available. The only thing they don't have is the 'colour' white.

When you print, you have all kinds of coloured ink and black ink available. But no white ink.
That is where the problem arises. If you have a photo with pure white in it, no ink will be used in that area. You therefore end up with the colour of your paper. For a perfect print, you would also want ink in the areas that should be white.

There is a very simple solution. Before printing, make sure that the white area is not completely white. This is easy to achieve by making a small adjustment to the curves. You can do this in Photoshop, Lightroom, and virtually any other serious photo-editing programme.

The triangle at the top right of your histogram allows you to make pure white visible. No ink will be used there in a print.
A curve has both an input and an output. White has a value of 255 on the histogram scale. This is the input. Normally, the output is equal to the input, but by changing the value to, for example, 250, you make the white a fraction greyer.

By changing the output in your curves from 255 to, for example, 250, a small amount of ink will also be used in the white areas when you make a print.
Because the white is now a fraction greyer, which is barely or not at all visible to the naked eye, the printer will still use ink in the areas that are white. This means that ink will be used across the entire photo, so that you will no longer see the blank photo paper anywhere.

You can apply the same trick to pure black by keeping the input at 0 but setting the output to 5. This makes the pure black slightly less pure. But because ink is used here anyway, the need is somewhat less urgent.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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10 comments

Tom wrote on Tuesday 17 May 2022 at 12:41 | reply
Benieuwd dat je niet toelicht waarom het niet wenselijk is het wit van het fotopapier te behouden?
In mijn optiek is dit niet erg, wit is wit en als het goed papier is zal dit ook wit blijven (en niet bvb vergelen na verloop van tijd) zou ik denken?
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Danny de Jong wrote on Tuesday 17 May 2022 at 20:15 | reply
Grappig met dat wit van het papier van Ton. Dezelfde vraag is: Als je muur mooi wit is wanneer daar stucwerk op zit en waarom verven we dit dan toch nog een keer wit... en vinden we dat toch mooier (en ik heb het niet over stof)
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Tom wrote on Wednesday 18 May 2022 at 09:45 | reply
Dit is voor mij iets totaal anders. Een nieuwe stucwerk muur is namelijk niet mooi wit, maar mat en daardoor vaak ook licht geschakeerd in kleur. Het is ruw, wordt dus snel vuil en is niet te onderhouden.
Je schildert de muur dus op zijn minst om ervoor te zorgen dat het mooi wit blijft.
Dat heb je met papier niet.

Ik ben dus nog steeds benieuwd naar Nando zijn motivatie
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Nando wrote on Wednesday 18 May 2022 at 10:03 | reply
@Tom:
Het is simpel. Door inkt op papier te brengen verander je de reflectieve waarde van het papier. Hoewel ik moet toegeven dat het bij heel goede kwaliteit papier voor het oog niet snel zichtbaar zal zijn.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Mac wrote on Thursday 19 May 2022 at 07:44 | reply
@nando
Je schrijft terecht dat de printers niet de kleur wit hebben.
Maar er zijn in het verleden inktsets geweest voor Z/W printen die zwart, aantal grijs tinten en wit hadden.
Volgens mij zijn ze er niet meer (snel googlelen levert niks op), maar weet het niet zeker.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Nando wrote on Thursday 19 May 2022 at 09:44 | reply
@Mac:
Met een beetje Googelen (in het Engels) is er wel wat over wit printen te vinden, wat met name industrieel gebruikt wordt voor het printen op transparante materialen.
Grijstinten zie je wel regelmatig de kop opsteken bij consumenten printers.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Saturday 21 May 2022 at 00:30 | reply
@Nando, je stelt terecht dat alles wat puur wit is op een foto en je drukt dat af op papier, dan zal de printer op die delen geen inkt gebruiken. Als oplossing raad je aan om de printer toch inkt te laten gebruiken door de output van de curve op bijvoorbeeld 250 te zetten.
Nu maak ik van kleurenfoto's soms grafische zwart/wit beelden door de kleurenfoto om te zetten naar z/w om te zetten en dan alle grijswaarden eruit te halen zodat je vrijwel enkel puur zwart en wit overhoudt. Zou je in zo'n geval dan ook de outputwaarde van wit in de curve aanpassen? Ik kan je hier als voorbeeld nu geen foto bijsluiten om je te laten zien wat ik bedoel.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Saturday 21 May 2022 at 00:37 | reply
@Nando, om je te laten zien wat ik bedoel kun je eens kijken op deze link: https://www.facebook.com/Gempephotography/photos/a.1480513838943779/1480513862277110
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Nando wrote on Tuesday 24 May 2022 at 10:42 | reply
@Donald Willemsen:
In dit geval zou ik gewoon wit wit laten.
(de foto is overigens niet uit de Provence zoals erbij staat, maar het is Etretat in Normandië)
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Donald Willemsen wrote on Tuesday 24 May 2022 at 10:56 | reply
Nando, er was met het verwerken van de gps gegevens een foutje gemaakt. Je hebt gelijk. Het was me al opgevallen maar ben vergeten het te verbeteren.
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