Digital BW, The Print

Hi Austin,

I hope you don't mind if I reply to your off-list post on-list, but I think
you raise good questions that others have touched on and may like to weigh
in on too.
 
> A quick note/question on your write-up.  It's a very good write-up, BTW.  I
> don't believe the clips you are using at the bottom contain the top part of
> the histogram.  You have a white shirt collar in the image, and that would
> be quite a bit lighter than the eyes...so I believe that's the area that the
> very top part of the histogram would be representing, right?

Yes, the histograms were taken from the entire image. My thought at the time
was to show what the entire images' histograms were, primarily to show the
extent of the moves, then to select a full tonal range area to demonstrate
visual parity. BTW, I did inspect the entirety of both images and the same
parity held throughout. After your, Bill's, and Barry's posts, I see the
histos of the details would have made more sense. Perhaps this will get me
off my butt to expand the article and include that.

Antonis, your grayscale idea was good too. It was the sloth in me that said
"no". 
 
> Also, don't the JPEG images have all the tones, since JPEG will basically
> re-size the image and fill in the missing tones?  I think those images won't
> show the posterization for both those reasons...

Well that I suppose is another topic open to discussion and experimentation.
All I can say is that the jpegs (high quality) fairly represent what the
"images" themselves looked like with my eyes; that is to say, both were full
ranged and with detail, with barely, if any, discernable difference between
them.

(If I might digress... what I find interesting is that if there is a
discernable difference, I'll bet at least 50% will prefer the 8-bit version.
It might look a bit sharper.)

True, the histograms get rewritten, much as a resizing, rotation, or blur
would do. To my mind that just furthers the point that for much image
editing the histogram is NOT a good indicator of image quality, precisely
because it is so easy to make a good histogram from a bad image.
 
> What do you think?  I histogramed those two images, and they both have full
> histograms, up until they cutoff, not having the white shirt collar in
> them...so even if the posterization exists in the .tiff files, it doesn't in
> the .jpegs...

The question then becomes, does jpeging actually make a bad "image" look
better? IOW, if the IMAGE itself actually VISIBLY shows posterization will
jpeging that image ameliorate the posterization, as it's smoothed histogram
would suggest? It's a good question, worthy of some testing, and I don't
honestly know the answer.  My suspicion is that that you'd actually end up
with the ironic situation of an image looking worse while the histogram
looks better - but that's purely speculative on my part.
 
> If you want a place to post the two .tiff images, you can use my FTP or web
> site.

Thank you. I think what would make the most sense would be to put the link
to the site in the groups files section along with the two detail TIFFS, if
Martin and Antonis feel we can afford the space. Otherwise I may take you up
on that.

Thanks,
Todd