Digital BW, The Print

Saturday, August 31, 2002, 10:56:38 PM, treadwinkle wrote:

t> As far as my workflow, well... thusfar all I do is convert to 
t> greyscale and export to Piezo where I select the paper and dpi.  I'm 
t> already feeling stupid because I'm guessing that is the most 
t> elementary way of doing this and there are a ton of other options... 
t> I suppose.  I just did what Piezo sofware suggested I do with some 
t> really excellent color files.  In fact, they are extremely well lit 
t> and frankly, really excellent files.

t> But to give you an example, one shot literally looks like a guy has 
t> stubble on his face because of the soft shadow on the actor's jaw 
t> line.  There is little to no skin tones.  In fact, where in the 
t> color file you see pores, in piezo print, it's just "white".

t> I'm very green at this, I admit.  And maybe my biggest problem is, I 
t> underestimate how much work this is going to take.  Where do I go 
t> from here?

t> Treadwinkle 


Like I said, I've only just got started in this myself (digital B&W
printing), though I am fairly proficient in PS. Others may have more
experienced and direct suggestions but here's a few of mine. Are you
satisfied with the transition to greyscale and the look you're
achieving? If you're starting with color RGB files I recommend taking
a look at this little tutorial in converting to greyscale and being
able to tweak the settings in such a way as to vary the tonal range in
a variety of areas in the image:

<http://www.russellbrown.com/body.html>

Click on the tutorial PDF called "Seeing in Black & White"

Next, how does your Levels histogram look? Is it smooth or is it
jagged with a "combing" look? I find that even files that might look
fairly nice on screen can have very poor histograms with "jaggies" or
"comb lines" which will cause poor tonal transitions and posterization
in areas.

Are your original files 16-bit? I scan all my files in 16-bit, do
general Levels adjustment, then convert to 8-bit. This preserves a
smooth histogram and keeps tonal ranges steady and smooth.

Best regards,
 Richard  

mailto:richard@...