Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Martin Wesley"
<mwesley250@e...> wrote:
> Would you have the time to run us through your workflow camera to 
> print? And the pro's and con's of staying in a 16-bit space?

I'll post my workflow soon, I need to write it in a way that is
concise and doesn't get too long. It's pretty classic Culbertson 
CMYK with PressReady.
Here's my nonsense about 16 bit. No matter how much I try to perfect
this stuff, or which workflow or driver I try, I can take 
what I thought was a great print that makes me drool and be suddenly
let down a touch when I put a great platinum or silver print next to
it. Traditional methods are truly continuous tone, objectively and 
subjectively. Inkjet prints are not strictly continuous tone and I
think it can be sensed. I don't care how many articles you direct me
to about how many levels of gray humans can detect, and how these
prints far 
exceed it, I can see the difference. It's part of the power of the
best photographic prints for me, and it's still not quite there. I
love these prints and intend to continue with quads, I can do things
with these 
images now that come much closer to what I was after. But there does
seem to be this trade off, and I'm still not positive it's worth it.
I'll do anything I can to minimize that difference, even if I'm not
sure it's helping. A 16 bit workflow results in obviously 
superior histograms at the end of the process. Whether an RGB or CMYK
workflow, these things have been jacked pretty heavily by the time
they're really well separated for the best prints, and 16 bit helps a 
lot. If any part of the workflow converts to 8 bit, even if it
converts back again for the sep stage, you'll see a difference in the
histo.
You could argue it doesn't matter, the drivers all remap the pixels
anyway before sending ink to nozzles. It you reres your 
image in photoshop, you'll see your histos get smooth again because
some averaging has been done. It's very probable the dithering process
does the same thing to some degree.
With some images, I can see a difference with 16 bit from scan to
print, with others maybe not. But rather than spend 
precious time testing the theory, I'd rather just print this way to
make sure I've done 
nothing to further destroy that illusive dimension in the prints. It
was hard enough the darkroom way!
See, I told you it'd be too long.
Why don't these lines ever wrap right in Yahoo?
Tyler