I just found out about lithograph prints recently, and apparently I’ve been doing what is the equivalent in digital terms. I shoot Raw with my Pentax, and manipulate the exposures in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw.
What I was trying to achieve was a high contrast, grainy look to my images. What I discovered is that by increasing the saturation of the blue channel and tweaking the contrast to the max I got the results I was looking for.
Most of a digital camera’s noise comes from the blue channel, so I figured that pumping it up and de-saturating the photo as a whole would increase the noise until it took on a grainy look. It worked like a charm, so I’ve been having fun with that technique for about two years now.
So I just found out that there was a group on Flickr dedicated to lith prints. I’m so excited! It’s like meeting long lost brothers who see the world through the same eyes as me. To celebrate, I’ve decided to share some of my .XMP settings and example photos to show what’s possible using this very cool technique.
Here’s the .XMP file. Make sure to right click or ctrl-click “Save As:” to save the file.
Digital Lith .XMP file
Here are some examples:
