Digital BW, The Print

Several years ago, Amadou Diallo invited members of this group attending Photo Expo to print a standard file using our various workflows and then get together in his studio to compare the results.About a dozen of us downloaded a large file that Amadou supplied and printed the "standard" print on Photo Rag. We also printed an interpretive version of the RAW file. 

Since I was an amateur using a plain vanilla Epson 2400 with ABW I showed up at his studio worried that I would somehow be laughed out of the room. Virtually all the attendees either ran professional printing studios or were Photoshop instructors. However, when we each tacked up our prints on his viewing wall, I found that I couldn't tell any difference between my standard print and the others. Thinking that perhaps my perceptual abilities were not up to the job, I asked several people around me to point out the differences. Even with our noses to the prints, no one seemed to be able to show me why any of the others was better. 

The point of my comments is not to deny that there is a difference between the inkets, but rather that the differences must be very small and perhaps insignificant for most of us. Certainly, the differences in our abilities to manipulate the digital files is of far greater importance to the final print than differences in the inks.

Evan