Digital BW, The Print

I'd agree that a large file size is probably a waste of time, but I'm not so 
sure that Photoshop has better algorithms than the Epson drivers.

Remember that a number of different things are going on at the same time when 
you send a file to the printer. As well as downsizing or upsizing to fit the 
image to the desired reproduction size, it is also doing the internal CMYK 
conversion and dithering to match the dot patterns and ink colours in use.

My gut feeling is that doing just one of those actions in isolation is going 
to be less efficient than giving the driver the opportunity to optimise every 
factor at once.

This gut feeling is backed up by the fact that I get perfectly satisfactory 
results IMO by just trusting to the Epson drivers. 

I never print from Photoshop, but nstead use Paint Shop Pro as I am fairly 
sure that it does no resizing of its own, just passing the expected 
magnification factor to the drivers along with the image data.

On Thursday 21 Mar 2002 9:17 am, Alessandro Pardi wrote:
> I can't tell neither who nor where, but I remember someone stating that
> sending files with a dpi number over 360 (or some other threshold) to the
> printer is a waste of time, since the printer's driver (at least Epson own
> driver, don't know about Piezo) is going to discard anyway the
> extra-information (i.e., it's downsampling the file). Therefore, apart from
> efficiency issues (sending smaller files), it's better to downsample in
> Photoshop, that has a better algorithm.
> Can someone confirm this, or is it yet another digital legend?
>
> Alessandro Pardi
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Brownlow [mailto:lists@...]
> Sent: mercoled\ufffd 20 marzo 2002 04.27
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Combing cure -- change size after the curves are
> applied
>
> On 3/19/02 paul.roark@... wrote:
> >>The absence of combing in the resized image is not a sign that it's
> >>'better', it's a sign that information has been lost. ...
> >
> >True.  Downsizing clearly eliminates information.  I suspect the
>
> information
>
> >lost is beyond what can be seen.
> >
> >So, the problem and cure -- that is, both the "combing" and the downsizing
> >(that I would do anyway) -- are probably irrelevant to the ultimate image
> >quality of the print.  I found it was not worth my time to print over 360
> >dpi anyway.
>
> I think you are probably right on all counts. It depends what driver you
> are printing through but my point is that the extra step to downsample to
> 360 dpi is at best unnecessary.
>
> However it probably doesn't have any impact on image quality either way.
> Re dpi, in tests I *thought* I could see some marginal improvements in
> image quality through the piezo drivers beyond 360 dpi but frankly I
> wouldn't be remotely confident about picking the higher rez images
> blindfold.