THE CRAFT
The lab print
Three dyes in density, then the sheet they were printed on · a soft yellow, a sharp cyan and a paper white.

3 steps
- STEP 1 · THE THREE DYESEffects → COLOUR → Coupler. A colour print is not ink: it is three dyes formed in the paper, each an amount of light stopped. Process → C-type sets the four dials that matter. Dye softness is the one to feel first · the yellow blurs most and the cyan least, so the reds stay sharp while the blues go soft, which is why a colour print never looks like a sharpened file.
- STEP 2 · AGE IT, OR DO NOTDye cloud is the grain: three clouds that were never in register, and it lives in the mids because paper white has no dye in it to clump. Crossover leans the shadows cyan-green and the highlights warm. Age takes the cyan first, which is why a print left in a drawer goes magenta-red rather than simply pale. Instant lifts the black and creams the paper; Cross pushes all of it.
- STEP 3 · THEN THE SHEETEffects → PRINT & PRESS → Printroom, on top. Stock → Pearl, which is the clean gloss a lab prints on, and Brought back by → Scanner. Coupler made the colour; Printroom makes the object. Stacked this way round the dyes are rendered first and the paper is the last thing that touches them, which is the order it happens in.
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