Raghu Rai’s Delhi, immediately came to mind as we started working on this book of brilliant photographs of Ahmedabad by Vivek Desai. This being a photographer’s book, we had to be careful as to not indulge in ‘color corrections’ and keep the colors and casts as they were. We were told not even to ‘touch’ the photographs for dust and scratches.
The first 9 gray-scale photographs are printed in CMYK gray after converting them to a special profile devised by us. The profile is made in such a way that it converts a gray-scale photograph without any unwanted cast at the same time not compromising on shadows or highlights.
The whole book is printed with 10m stochastic screen and maximum data from the originals is transferred on the printed sheet, giving almost screen-less, bromide look to the photographs. There are some extra photographs which are ‘grainy’ and the grains are also transferred as they were in the original.
As the Guru Raghu Rai has commented on the back title, ‘Vivek has chosen to capture the life of ordinary people on streets’ and we have very honestly and truthfully translated his art onto the printed paper rather than ‘artificially beautifying’ it.
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