Digital BW, The Print

Hi Stan,

No problem...you slid in a bit of humor, and having "conversed" with you for
some time now, I wasn't at all offended.  I mean, after all, you do
credential your self as a "PS 6 ACE" ;-)

I did two very quick scans, one "true" grayscale (the Leaf scanner scans
grayscale using a single neutral density filter, instead of RGB and
converting), one RGB (as my scanner scans grayscale NOT in RGB).  Please
don't comment on the tonality of the scan, yes, to make it a decent image,
it needs adjustment...but for the purposes of this test, it doesn't matter.
I set the scanner to scan at 8" x 8" at 100 PPI...so the files aren't that
big.  I just put them on the web, they are TIFF files, so they are
uncompressed.  I used the EXACT same setpoints, cropping and tonal curves
for each...

http://www.darkroom.com/Leafscan/B&W01.TIF
http://www.darkroom.com/Leafscan/RGB01.TIF

"Thumb" through the channels, compare the two scans, and let me know what
you think.

Regards,

Austin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shire,Stanley [mailto:sshire@...]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 3:49 PM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re: Convert to B&W plugins
>
>
> Excuse the tone of my last post. Way too many students doing PS
> restoration projects, me trying to give each a reasonable workflow and
> hanging a faculty show into the wee hours.
>
> Your points are interesting. Steven Kobrin is going to email me his file
> when he returns from a trip so that I can see what you guys are
> experiencing.
> I will get the gs scan of the test neg done in a day or two.
> S.
>
> Stan Shire
> Associate Professor/Department Chair
> Photographic Imaging
> Community College of Philadelphia
> Adobe Photoshop 6 A.C.E.
> Author: Hands On Photoshop 7: Tutorial Workshops
>
> 215 751-8320
> sshire@...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Austin Franklin [mailto:darkroom@...]
> Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2002 9:22 AM
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re: Convert to B&W plugins
>
> Hi Stan,
>
> > Austin:
> > Do you seriously mean did I look at the image???
> > What else would I do? Am I missing something here?
>
> It wasn't meant that if you didn't, you were a dunderfutzen!  It wasn't
> my
> first thought do simply thumb through the channels...
>
> > I am fairly competent in Photoshop, have been printing traditional
> color
> > and black and white for about 40 years and have studied with Ansel
> > Adams. My monitor is carefully (and regularly) calibrated with an
> > EyeOne, I build profiles with real software and take my vitamins and
> > Wheaties each day.
>
> OK, you get a gold star!
>
> > Despite this, I still see only very minor differences
> > in the channels of a grayscale image scanned as a color neg and I
> > attribute these to a base color.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "base color", as in the actual color of
> the
> film?  The majority of differences I saw in the one B&W negative I
> scanned
> as RGB were in the mid-tones.  How would the base color manifest it self
> prominently different in the mid-tones?
>
> > A grayscale is just
> > that..gray.neutral.no color, and if someone can show me how scanning a
> > BW neg as an RGB image would allow any (other that very minor) changes
> > in the image, I'd love to learn this.
>
> Perhaps you could explain why "convert to grayscale" in Photoshop uses a
> "mix" of the three channels, instead of just using one...
>
> The scanner (at least all but the Leaf, that I am aware of) scans
> everything
> as RGB anyway...whether you have selected B&W or color, and then
> converts
> the RGB data to grayscale using some canned "mix" of the three color
> channels.  Perhaps there is a scanner that simply takes one of the color
> channels and calls that grayscale...and sends you only that channel when
> you
> ask for grayscale data.
>
> What people are saying, is they get better results by getting the RGB
> data
> from the scanner and applying their own "mix" of the three channels in
> PS
> when they convert to grayscale.  This makes sense, as different films
> will
> have different "colors", and simply using a single mix in the scanner
> will
> give inconsistent results across films.  I also believe you certainly
> can do
> at least as equal a job in PS using your own mix, if the mix the scanner
> has
> chosen happens to be perfect, but somehow I doubt it, so it leads one to
> believe you certainly could do better.  It's also subjective.  What's
> important in the image to one person (such as using a lot of the red
> channel
> may make the image fuzzier) may be different to another.
>
> Regards,
>
> Austin