Digital BW, The Print

Tyler,

Thank you for the rough outline. I completely sympathize with you on 
the traditional methods. There are some real trade offs here. I keep 
hoping to here more about producing digital negs, contact printing, 
etc. The group and the market seem totally focused on inkjet but I am 
hoping for some other options.

I hate to point you down this road as it is full of pitfalls and 
raises new questions, but have you tried varnishing a print yet? I am 
not exaggerating when I say that a varnished Museo, Schoellershammer 
Velvet or other similarly surfaced inkjet print takes a quantum leap 
toward traditional B&W media.

Your lines probably are not wrapping correctly due to some mismatch 
of screen font size and resolution, as a guess.

Martin Wesley


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Tyler Boley" <tyler@t...> 
wrote:
> --- 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