Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Seth Rossman" <seth@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 6:42 AM
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Digital, film, scanning comparisons


> Martin-
>
> I don't really think you are losing 2/3 of the info --just not using it.
> Remember that the (Lab) Lightness or Luminosity Channel IS the B&W layer.
> The rest is just color info dropped on top. (This is an
oversimplification,
> of course.)

> The advantage of using the RGB before converting to B&W is in the channel
> mixer.  That really amounts to the same as using yellow, orange, green,
etc.
> filters on a B&W film.
>
>
Seth,

Well if I can't use it I guess I consider it lost. Your are right that by
pulling information from each of the three channels you can maximize the
result you get when you have to drop to one channel. It really isn't just a
megapixel game but the issue of resolution and bit depth. With RGB you have
in a sense a bit depth of 24 and with B&W 8. Tripling the ppi of a digital
camera would only help to some extent but perhaps not in the key area of
capturing a large number of tones. Maybe they need to just be 16-bit RGB.
That would be a real boost to direct digital B&W.

Martin