Digital BW, The Print

Bob--I did something very similar since my BO prints look very, very good to my eyes. Reading about metamerism, black dots and color casts made me think that I was losing my eyesight since I had not seen any of these factors. I showed these prints to several of my friends who are good, amateur photographers and they were impressed with the B&W product. These were produced using the 2200, BO Epson inks and Epson Enhanced Matte paper.


I discussed several prints with a highly regarded landscape photographer who only produces B&W in a chemical darkroom. He earns his living entirely on the sale of his prints and from the number of packages at his shop going to buyers, it appears that he is doing quite well. He has published several books, calendars and has had many showings of his prints at various galleries.  

He also picked the BO prints as the ones he liked. The tonality of these prints were very close to his own prints. We were not comparing the artistic quality of the photos as clearly his were much, much better than mine. 

I then asked if he could see any dots (these were 11X14 prints) and he could not. He did, however, go for his lupe. And, with the lupe the black dots were clearly seen. We laughed at that saying that one should not look at photographs with a lupe when viewing these for pleasure. 

Interestingly, he is experimenting with PS, Mac, an Epson 7600 and Image Print RIP. He has not produced any digital prints for sale but he is quite encouraged about the results he is getting. He did not have any to show me as the digital prints were at another of his shops a good distance away. He is scanning with an Imacon but said that the new Microtec scanner at a fraction of the price is just as good. He has not used a digital camera. But, the yet-to-be-released Kodak 14n has his attention. His favorite paper is Hahnemuhle PR.

Peter Palmieri

  From: Bob_Michaels 

  I did my own BO vs. Hex test by printing (1280) four different
  7.5x10.5 images twice. Once with MIS VM and Roark workflow and once
  black only with 1280 Epson driver. Each matched pair was on the same
  paper, same 1440 dpi, no different Photoshop adjustments except for
  the Roark curves. 

  Then I laid out the four pairs for a very critial well published fine
  art photographer who lives on grants, print sales and teaching
  photography. He is a master b&w wet darkroom printer (MF & 4x5) but
  who knows nothing of digital printing.  I only told him the pairs were
  printed by different methods without saying which were by the similar
  method and please comment on the differences. I know him to be very
  critical. 

  He had nitpicks (other than my basic photography skill)But he never
  said that one had better tonal transitions than the other. Nor did he
  ever say one had bigger dots than the other. No comments about any
  aspect of BO vs quad/hex being discussed here. 

  Finally, I asked him to pick which of the pairs he liked best. He had
  problems making the decision but finally picked the BO print of each
  of the four pairs. 

  I'm NOT a missionary trying to convince the world that 1280 BO is as
  good / better than quadtone. I'm too old and beat up for that. I'm
  only trying to understand why my 1280 BO prints look as good as my
  hextones (Roark & Woolf workflows with appropriate inksets). I
  honestly don't think I'm that bad at digital printing though I
  certainly have seen those much better than me.

  I'm still open to ideas.

  Bob Michaels 



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