Digital BW, The Print

I've tried it both ways on my 4000 and seen no advantage to tripling file
size with RGB vs. grayscale--as long as you do everything in 16-bit for as
long as possible. Bruce Fraser's tutorials on how to do much of the stuff in
16 bit you can "officially" only do in 8 bit are the clearest I've
seen--start with http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/16097.html and
check out the other links that mention high bit.

Using his methods, my 35mm workflow for B&W shots I care about is now:
1) unadjusted grayscale scan at max res, Nikon's 14-bit setting; based on
experimenting and/or superstition, I usually use 4x multisampling, but for
low-key or large shadow areas will crank it up to 8x or 16x; archive your
raw scan
2) save raw as a 16-bit file, *make any crops and do as much dust spotting
as possible now*, archive THAT file, and also save it as an 8-bit "practice"
file
3) make all selections and practice changes in the 8 bit work file using
adjustment layers, then once satisfied, use Bruce's tricks to go back and do
them in a copy of the cropped/despotted 16 bit work file
4) downsample the 16 bit work to 8 bit and save as your "final" file, apply
unsharp mask if you want, do any final dust removal touchups necessary, then
print

Not as convoluted as it sounds with some practice. A CD burner helps to
archive the various work files, which you keep to make any tweaking much
easier down the road. (That's why I learned the hard way to do as much dust
spotting as possible BEFORE everything else--otherwise, the hard work is
lost if you want to make even a minor adjustment after printing).

Hope this helps,
Doug

> 
> From: "Tim Spragens" <t.spragens@...>
> Subject: Re: Scanning B&W 35MM Negatives using Nikon Super CoolScan 4000
> 
>> I'm assuming that
>> once you get the image into PS that, besides inverting it, you
>> immediately switch to 8-bit per channel.  A lot of the tools I like to
>> use (dodging/burning, etc.) aren't available when in 16-bit per
>> channel.
> 
> Some may, but I stay in 16-bit as long as possible. Many of the tools
> only available in 8-bit can be approached a different way in 16-bit,
> though indirectly. I stay in 48-bit color as long as possible, before
> even dropping to greyscale.
> 
> Tim