Digital BW, The Print

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] Digital, film, scanning comparisons


> Martin writes:
>
> > I have seen far too many fine B&W prints made
> > from scans of color transparencies to agree
> > with you on that one!
>
> You can certainly get good B&W from color transparencies, but you can get
> only ONE B&W that way.  I meant good in the sense of B&W as produced by
true
> B&W films.  You cannot duplicate the results of actual B&W films by
> grayscaling RGB images.  You can get one type of B&W from RGB, with a
couple
> of minor variations, but you can't get the vast majority of B&W renderings
> offered by dedicated B&W capture (film or digital).

Anthony,

At this point I am not sure how much digital B&W printing you have done but
you can get very different B&W renderings from color film scans or digital
color files depending upon how you blend the RGB channels in Photoshop. In
addition you can buy software that takes color files and applies curves to
them to simulate the response of various B&W films and color filters as
well.
>
> The classic example is infrared (because that's easier for people to
> understand), but it applies to B&W in the visible light range, too.

There has even been some software to simulate that!

I shoot B&W film myself and you are not incorrect in what you say, but it
really seems to have no significance in producing a fine print using digital
means.

Martin