When an SC leaves

[Eireann]

For some reason, I remember an SC we had when I worked in a photo lab, many moons ago. This woman viewed herself as quite the talented photographer. She would go through her prints ever so slowly, gauging not her ability to compose a shot, but our ability to print her genius works of art.

So she was always coming in with her demands. This one? It should be darker. This one? It should be lighter.

And the classic one:

"I'd like the pinks a little pinker, and the greens a little greener..."

(For those of you who don't understand, we could do some color correction, adding and subtracting colors, but pink - i.e., magenta - and green are color opposites, so you can't make the pinks pinker while making the greens greener. It's one or the other; take your choice.)

Eventually, this SC - and, well, at least she wasn't a screamer or one of those I-spend-x-amount-of-money-here-and-you'd-all-starve-without-my-business - came in to say goodbye. Seems she and her partner were moving.

Clear across the country!

Everyone was duly polite to her, and when she left, everyone gathered in the back room and the owners broke out the sparkling apple cider to celebrate.

[jedimaster91]

Mmmmm......sparkling apple cider.

[RetailWorkhorse]

(For those of you who don't understand, we could do some color correction, adding and subtracting colors, but pink - i.e., magenta - and green are color opposites, so you can't make the pinks pinker while making the greens greener. It's one or the other; take your choice.)

Anyone with a half-way decent photo manipulator program could tell her that. Magenta and Green are complete opposite ends of the colour wheel (Contrasting).

[Eireann]

Magenta and Green are complete opposite ends of the colour wheel (Contrasting).

You know that, I know that, everyone in the photo lab knew it, but she flat-out refused to believe that her photos didn't have some magical quality that allowed such manipulation. OH, what a relief it was when she was gone!

Of course, we still had to deal with the photographer who was - and, I'm sure, still is - firmly and unshakeably convinced that he was God, and that we existed solely and exclusively to serve him, at all times of the day or night.

[Chromatix]

Perhaps she simply wanted increase colour saturation across the board, rather than a colour shift. Not going to happen with an optical printing process, though it is fairly easy for a computer to handle.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

If she was shooting film, a warming filter probably would have fixed her right up. Or even film with a warming cast to it...Kodak made a nice one I used to use. What it did to colors was amazing. But then, she probably didn't know enough about her craft to explore that sort of thing.

She sounds like every other boob that used to walk into my lab. So many people think that if they own a camera that means they are Ansel Freaking Adams.

[PhotoChick]

She was probably also using the cheap film. The difference in color and appearance between things shoot with "drug store" film and kodak's "pro" line in pretty amazing and for not a horrible price difference.

[Eireann]

No, it wasn't the saturation, it was that she wanted individual colors to be, well, "better". She would spend a lot of time at the counter explaining what she wanted, and then she failed to understand why it wouldn't work.

We had one guy who came in, and was foisted off on me when I was new, who simply could not grasp certain photographic basics. He came in on a regular basis, ALWAYS asked the SAME questions, then went away until the next time he had an irresistible urge to bother us. Maybe he always knew when someone had just been hired.

But at least pink-and-green was kind enough to leave us.