Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 3/19/2011 4:07:54 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
wolarsky@... writes:

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






Hi Evan:
I will echo this, as I was surprised at the quality of Evan's ABW version  
of the image, compared to the rest.... mostly versions of piezotone (from a  
1280 in my case), and various piezography inksets. One, perhaps important  
factor, was that the image Amadou had us print, had a narrow range of 
tones...  that is to say, flat. It was a photograph of a Dongon structure in the 
Sahara.  Outstanding, was Tyler Boley's StudioPrint version printed with his 
"secret  sauce" ink limiting.
 
Rich
_www.rmassiephotography.com_ (http://www.rmassiephotography.com) 
 
 


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