Digital BW, The Print

George,

Where to start (other than that six-pack of course)

You have touched on a large number of issues that are absolutely 
critical to the advancement of digital B&W.

The 8-bit/16-bit issue with Photoshop being appropriately at the top 
of your list. The unfortunate side of the situation is that they have 
no serious competition to drive them to change. There are reportedly 
some photo editing programs that answer these issue but lack the 
industry wide compatibility. In addition a friend has contact with 
Adobe informs me that less than 5% of Adobe's revenue is derived from 
Photoshop. Apparently, Acrobat is the big money maker. They appear to 
have little motivation to change.

So I suspect that the task of the foreseeable future is the 
development of the proper workflows to try an compensate for 
Photoshop's short comings.

I was lucky enough to stumble into Silverfast when I bought my 
Polaroid 4000 and also purchased in with my Polaroid 120 (although 
there is an incompatibility with my system I am still waiting for 
them to resolve.) I have been RAW scanning in 16-RGB (I develop in 
Pyro so the RGB makes sense for me), working the file in SF HDR then 
dropping into Photoshop. Some times pulling multiple "scans" out of 
HDR to recombine in 8-bit Photoshop.

I have used the gamma control in Silverfast to good effect. Some of 
the raw scan problems I have heard reported on the new Nikon 8000 for 
instance sound as if they are gamma relate and there is no adjustment 
available in the software.

I have not worked with the LUT's. I thank you for the tip and if you 
have the time more details in this regard would be appreciated.

The issue of creating an analog to push/pull development is of great 
interest not only to using Polaroid film in the view camera but for 
roll film shooters as well. Typically people speak of two exposures, 
one for the highlights and one for the shadows. Is this really the 
best approach? Why not three or more exposures? How do they get 
combined? What we are talking about here is developing the digital 
equivalent of the Zone System, a coherent approach to exposing film 
in light of the potential of combining multiple exposures and scans.

One aspect of teaching B&W tonal values requires exposing young 
people to high quality B&W prints. I doubt if 1% of the population of 
the 1st world has held in their hands or closely inspected a "fine 
art" level print. This is not to sound defeatist but to indicate that 
this is another area where greater thought and effort are needed.

Thanks to your magazine articles I escaped a lot of the trials and 
tribulations with the early ink sets. But I have to confess to some 
curiosity, as I have never seen any output from a MIS or Lysonic 
system. I have tried various methods of producing B&W prints from 
standard Epson inks and found it encouraging at the time but 
ultimately not satisfying. I have seen Iris B&W prints in galleries 
and I feel that Piezo is much better. I find the software to be 
excellent and enjoy the ease at which I can switch papers by changing 
profiles and minor tonal adjustments.

The 7000 and Piezo sound great but are not going to be price 
attainable for most. I hope that Epson will replace the aging 3000 
with a 17-inch wide printer incorporating 7000 technology. Others and 
myself have asked ConeTech about the possibilities of developing a 
Piezo version for the 5000 but never got a response. There is a big 
gulf (both $ and tech) between the current desktop technology and 
the "high end." I would love to see this addressed. I think there is 
a viable price point in the $1500 to $3000 range where a significant 
number of people would buy a complete hardware/software upgrade.

Much food for though. (I better get back to that six pack. It's 
getting warm.)

Thanks,

Martin Wesley



--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "George DeWolfe" 
<dewolfe@m...> wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> There are some real issues to be tackled. One is the reluctance 
> of Adobe to support 16 bit fully in Photoshop. This filters down 
> into the plug-ins, like Silverfast, where all you can scan in is 16 
> bit RAW. I did find a way to overcome this slightly - by changing 
> the default gamma from 2.00 to the maximum of 3.00 - and you 
> get a better looking image, but the companies just shuffle their 
> feet. Let's do some real workflows around this problem.
> 
> Scanning protocols are also problematical. Silverfast is the only 
> third pary scanning software that allows you to make your own 
> LUT's. I've fooled around and come up with N+1, N-1 and N+2 
> LUT's, and they work well - in 8 bit, of course. Both Mike Kravit 
> and I scan in 16, drop down into 8 bit Silverfast HDR and 
> optimize the image before it even gets into Photoshop. What do 
> you guys do at the scanning stage? What works consistenly?
> 
> Does anyone have a solid technique for combining shadow and 
> highlight exposures into one seamless image without resorting 
> to hair-pulling in and after the Apply Command? Seeing as we 
> are trying to get out of the darkroom into the lightroom, we need 
> to explore "closed loop" solutions like Polaroid films, where we 
> don't have much development control, but it doesn't go to the lab 
> and get scrunched either. And if we don't have development 
> control, what can we do with split exposures that takes care of 
> the contrast problem well with little fuss and bother? What, for 
> instance, defines a good highlight exposure and a good shadow 
> exposure for this kind of process?
> 
> Can we arrive at a general workflow through Photoshop that a 
> beginner could take and make a good print? This would be sort 
> of like the Develop/Stop/Fix/Wash routine of the old darkroom.
> 
> How do we teach beginners about Black and White tonal 
> values? I find in teaching workshops that the hardest part of this 
> is for people to actually see that something is wrong and needs 
> to be corrected tonally. But this is what probably separates great 
> printers from simply mediocre ones.
> 
> As far as I can see, having tried all the Quadtone types available 
> to date(and in spades, I might add),  Piezography is hard to beat, 
> and for several reasons: 1) It has a 2100dpi RIP, 2) It has 
> proprietary profiles for the inks and papers 3) It was designed by 
> a photographer and a printmaker, not a businessman, 4) If you 
> have a 7000, it prints in 16 bit, and 5) uses grayscale files.  The 
> others suffer from the fact that they are CMYK or RGB files, do not 
> have profiles, and cannot get over the hump of the 720 Epson 
> driver - in reality, they sell inks, not a total process.
> 
> I also applaud Steadman's desire to talk about other important 
> issues surrounding Black and White printmaking - Picasso once 
> said that whenever artists get together all they want to talk about 
> is where to buy good turpentine, and I suppose we're no 
> different.
> 
> I, too, would like to have this be a serious discussion and not the 
> typical "my brother stepped on a frog" list that the others tend to 
> be.
> 
> We are the pioneers.
> 
> Somebody open a six-pack.
> 
> George
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