Digital BW, The Print

>Nick, I occassionally print Ralph Gibson style grainy 35mm images, and
>have encountered many of the problems you
>mention. It's not only the severe separations that are the problem, but
>the Epson driver simply averaging out the detail in
>that grain.

Tyler -

"Averaging out the detail in the grain" is the perfect description of the
problem I'm having. But please read my post of this morning ("More quadtone
experiences") and let me know whether the PiezoBW driver with different
inks offers a way out.

>If you are playing with doing your own separation methods, I've gotten
>best results by letting the darker inks come much
>farther up the scale than normal, but not really much more of the black ink.

I would be instantly over my head if I tried fooling around with
separations, but thanks for the suggestion.

>All of John Brownlow's advice makes sense too. Particularly print size,
>additional sharpening work for me too.

My scans look good enough that any sharpening I apply is quite subtle and
makes little difference on the paper. The print size issue is interesting:
bigger gets better (more ink dots per unit image) until pixelation kicks
in. Preliminary results suggest I can easily get 8x12" full-frame, maybe
even 10x15", from a 35mm negative. Sure beats wrestling with wet 16x20
paper...

-- Nick

NICHOLAS HARTMANN                                +1 (414) 271-4890
611 N. Broadway, Suite 509                  fax: +1 (414) 271-4892
Milwaukee, WI 53202, USA                       polyglot@...

Technical and scientific translator:  German and French -> English