First, I would like you to know how much I enjoyed the landscape issue [Summer 2005]. Something intrigues me, though. I have David Muench’s book “Portrait of Utah,” published, I believe, in 1989. On page 7 of the book, there is an image of White Canyon taken at the same time as the image running on PhotoMedia’s cover. The color and contrast of the two images is remarkably different. PhotoMedia’s cover definitely has more punch and the color is flaming when compared to the book’s rendition of the nearly same image. I have been to White Canyon and know that the canyon walls do not look like the cover’s image. I am not being critical of the magazine but would love to know who boosted the color and contrast of the cover’s image; David or Marc Muench or the magazine’s editors?

I recall that a few years ago PhotoMedia ran Jack Dykinga’s photo of Coyote Canyon [Spring/Summer 2001] on the cover and the color of that image didn’t match his well-known published images of the same shot. I think both covers looked great, especially if you weren’t familiar with the places in question, but, if the magazine’s editors chose to alter the color of the images so radically, shouldn’t the viewer be told and it would interest me what the photographers had to say about the alteration.

Claire Curran
Santa Ana, Calif.

The publisher responds:

Good question! We do our best to be as true to the photographer’s intended color as possible when we reproduce their photos in PhotoMedia. There are, however, variables that influence our ultimate rendition of that color. Your comments assume there is one definitive print and/or exposure of the photo, which may not be the case. Additionally, when original (digitally scanned) RGB files are converted to CMYK for printing, there is almost always a color shift, which must be corrected. Also, in CMYK, there are various colors that are virtually unprintable and must be adjusted to approximate what the photographer had in mind. Finally, color can further alter on press, when the ink is hitting the page. This entire process of color reproduction, while extremely careful, is totally subjective — that is, no two people see color the same. You might say that all photos in PhotoMedia have been altered to some degree. In the case of David Muench’s cover photo, he actually requested that we add contrast and saturation to the color, which we did, and is what you noticed.