Digital BW, The Print

OK Mark & Michael, what you write makes sense, in priciple at least. From a practical stand point, let us focus on what you write below about silver contact prints.

Tyler Boley published this quite a while back.

http://www.custom-digital.com/2008/09/bw-print-quality/

Looking at the last image where there is a direct comparison of ABW and K7, each printed at 2880 dpi, and contrasted to silver contact print. Frankly, if this level of viewing magnification is realistic, even K7 is abysmal compared to silver contact. I mean really bad. I can step 10 feet away from my monitor and discern difference (smoothness) between silver contact and the inkjet prints. At 10 feet, other then the color differences, I don't see any objective difference among the inkjet prints.

So, for a while I have been of the opinion (biased, no doubt) that if the very best (K7 for smmothness) inkjet is acceptable in comparison to a contact print, then ABW K3 is equally acceptable. So workflow choices can be made on considerations other than smoothness, where clearly K6/K7 reign (at least microscopically).

Shilesh


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Mark" <mark@...> wrote:
>
...SNIP......
 
> Does the average viewer get so close to see the dot pattern noise generated by the latest inkjet printers? No, but to the very discerning viewer, there is still a tangible difference, sort of like looking at contact prints made in the darkroom versus optically enlarged prints. As enlargement factors go up, tonality and sharpness starts to break down into grain pattern noise at a specific viewing distance from the print, and the resolving power of the human eye then starts to exceed the resolved features in the image.
>