Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Truman Prevatt 
<tprevatt@m...> wrote:
> 
> The tinkering done in inkjet printing is a drop in
> the bucket compared to the wet darkroom. 

As a veteran darkroom printer, I think there is a key distinction.  
The tinkering you do in a wet darkroom is OPTIONAL for most ordinary 
prints.  

The difference between a wet darkroom and digital B+W printing is 
that the wet darkroom consists of a basic set of technology 
(darkroom, enlarger, easel, safelight, trays, developer, stop, fix, 
etc) that is universal and it has a standard workflow that you can 
teach anyone in an afternoon.   There are no universal or standard 
tools or processes in digital b+w.   Instead there are a zillion 
competing alternatives, each with their little band of adherents. 

We have plenty of people on this very forum who have tried THIS 
digital black and white system or THAT one for YEARS without getting 
satisfactory results.    

If you want to compare digital black and white to wet darkroom in 
terms of process and tools, you'd have to compare it to the wet 
darkroom of about 1855, when everything was still being invented and 
photgraphers were still experimenting with different technologies, 
and inventing or discovering processes as they were going along.