Digital BW, The Print

Ernst writes:

> Anthony, substitute 'essentialy opaque' for
> 'almost transparant'. Then start all over again.

The inks I'm looking at on inkjet prints are hardly transparent at all.

> Better compare inkjet printing with stochastic
> screen printing ...

I did.

> And that also means that the ppi/dpi relation
> is of another order than the ppi/lpi relation.

The essential point is that the true resolution of an inkjet printer is
nowhere near the machine-dot resolution.  You don't get 2880 pixels in one
inch on an inkjet printer advertised as 2880-dpi.

> Tone differences and by that colourmixing can be
> achieved in several ways: dot size variation, dot
> frequency, ink layer thickness.

I haven't seen evidence of ink-layer thickness being varied in inkjet
prints, but perhaps some of the fanciest inkjets do this.  To do it, they'd
need much more transparent inks than the inks used on the Epson prints I've
seen.

> They all rely on transparent inks.

You don't need transparent inks to vary dot size or frequency.  Indeed, if
you have truly transparent inks, you don't need to use adjacent dots at all;
you can just overlay one dot on top of another, blending colors to produce
one pixel per machine dot.  This is exactly what dye-sublimation does, and
if you compare a dye-sub print to an inkjet print under a loupe, the
difference is impossible to ignore.

> Easiest method is getting a loupe and examples
> of different printing systems.

I have, and it supports my previous explanation.  While inkjet printing is
excellent, I've not seen inkjet prints that exceed what is achieved by
high-end offset in terms of resolution.  I haven't examined any high-end,
small-sized inkjet prints, though (I've looked at large, high-end prints,
but perhaps their resolution is deliberately lower).

In any case, inkjet still leaves something to be desired in a number of
ways, but it does do a very nice job with the right printer under the right
circumstances.  My 2000P cannot match the quality from my MD-2300 dye-sub,
but it's good enough for most purposes, and using the latter was such a pain
that it finally wore me down, which is why I went to inkjet.