Advanced techniques?

[Ikiri]

Hi there,

I've been registered here for a while but never posted. So, just a quick intro/ "about me": I've been working with Photoshop since about 16 years. Educated in pre-press retouching, then full-time as a 'production line' retoucher & a BA in photography, then back to full-time retouching and now gathering ideas/portfolio work for going freelance.

I'm always keeping an eye open for learning new techniques and recently came across a job description for photographic retouching, with a terminology that left me a bit baffled.

Can someone here maybe explain what is meant by the following?

"dmax matching of disparate elements"

I know what "dmax" means. But what are "disparate elements"? I guess they mean "seamless blending of different compositing elements", right?

Thanks!

[csuebele]

Just my guess at this, they want you not only to make the colors match, but they want to make sure you can match the maximum dark densities of unlike images. Perhaps for compositing, or maybe so a series of images all look the same. for example, if several people work on different images and then all those images are placed in one room, will they look like one body of work in terms of color.

[eraanexact]

Yep, basically it's a fancy way to say "make sure your blacks match on your composites".
It's easy to spot a bad comp when, for example, the blacks in a car's tires are lighter than the black of its composited shadow.

[Ikiri]

I thought it would be something easy/obvious, articulated in a complicated way.... Quite strange, these job-descriptions some times, ey?