Digital BW, The Print

> 
> That sounds nearly impossible to do while retaining any kind 
of 
> quality! What's the secret? I would certainly like to see one of 
> those exibition prints. 
> 
> Bruce McElhaney
> McElhaney Portrait Studio
> Livonia, MI

Greetings Bruce, 

No particular secret, some more info below

Original film was Tri-X (rated at 200ASA), shot with Leica M4 and 
various lenses, mainly 28mm

Developed in D-76 (1:1)

Scanned at 2800dpi on Minolta Scan Multi with software upgrade 
as 16bit Raw Files, Inverted in Photoshop

Black/White points set in Levels, then Midpoint adjusted til it gave 
me good detail in shadow areas. Then cropped and upsampled 
using the crop tool to 18x27 at 300 dpi (I expected things to fall 
apart at this time, but was quite surprised at how well everything 
held together, histograms were quite smooth, no combing)

Dropped to 8Bit, then worked in multiple levels in various 
blending modes/layer masks to adjust densities in various 
areas of the print.

Sharpened using J. Deadman's SuperSharpen Action, slightly 
modified to my own tastes

Printed out with the Imageprint4 RIP on Legion Photo Matt, 
MIS-FS Inks, using Lyson 180 profile and Cone Ink settings. Gray 
profile was a custom one I had developed for printing Piezo on 
an 1160 on Epson Archival Matt

Just got back from putting them up, and am very pleased with the 
outcome.

Butch Hulett