This section exists for a single reason: to take you from the package that just arrived to your first usable curve, with no detours. No theory. No history of calibration. No digression about QuadToneRIP or 1980s darkrooms. All of that lives elsewhere in the manual for anyone who wants to dig in. Here, we print, we expose, we photograph, we export. Plan on one to two hours start to finish — drying the sensitized paper takes up most of that time. Active work in the app runs fifteen to twenty minutes.
The bet behind Calibration Flow is that one successful calibration changes everything that follows. You watch a clean, reproducible print come out on day one. Without a corrective curve, your first cyanotype will probably be too dense in the shadows and too pale in the highlights. With a curve the app generates from a single scanned test chart, you close that gap right away. That moment is what this section is aiming for.
We assume three things here: you have downloaded the app (web or iOS), you have opened a Picturale Hub account (free, two clicks), and you have at least one sheet of watercolour paper, a process chemistry (cyanotype is the simplest to start with) and a UV source — sun, tubes or Luminograph. If any one of those three is missing, go take a look at Vision Picturale first.
#What you'll find here
Three short pages, meant to be read in order:
- First calibration — the full step-by-step in one to two hours. Print the test chart, sensitize, expose, scan, generate the curve, export it. No detours.
- Understanding a test chart — why this odd grid of greys is the most important object in the whole process. Five minutes of reading to grasp what you're handling.
- Quick glossary — the seven terms you'll run into right away: test chart, patch, density, curve, polynomial, black point, white point. The full glossary lives elsewhere; here we keep the essentials.
#Where to begin
You've never made an alternative print. Read Understanding a test chart first, before you dive into calibration. Five minutes to avoid wasting three sheets.
You already practise cyanotype or another process. Skip straight to First calibration. Calibration Flow's vocabulary lines up with the one you already know — we didn't invent anything.
You just received a Luminograph. The Luminograph code is in the box, under the foam. Read the label, head to Access → Luminograph code to activate it (it grants 1 year of Pro Mode, then switches to Free Mode), then move on to First calibration.
You want to see the app before printing anything. Open
app.calibrationflow.com