Digital BW, The Print

Allessandro,

I come to a similar result differently, by using a copy of the 
background layer after switching to 8 bit, often in soft light mode, 
and then erasing the parts of the layer that produces effects I do 
not want.  Also, rather than use the burn/dodge tool, I use a layer 
set to soft light and medium gray (a box pops up asking if you want 
to set it to medium gray after you choose soft light).  Using that 
layer, you can burn by setting the foreground color to black and 
using the brush tool and dodge by using white as the foreground 
color.  The advantage over the burn/dodge tool is flexibility as you 
have control over both the brush and opacity.  (The opacity control 
seems finer grained that that using the tool.)

Steve

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, Alessandro Pardi 
<alessandro.pardi@i...> wrote:
> I also made a few experiments, and actually found that using the 
levels tool
> will actually enhance grain/grain aliasing more than curves or the
> burn/dodge tool. Anyway, the burn/dodge tool is quite awkward to 
use when
> you have a large section of the image to burn or dodge, as it is 
incremental
> (i.e. every stroke adds) so it's almost impossible to evenly darken 
skies,
> for instance. On the other hand, curves are better than levels in 
general,
> but it depends how steep a curve you have to apply to get the image 
where
> you want to.
> What I found can be a solution (but I'm still exploring) is to save 
a copy
> of the image before setting black and white points, so that 
contrast is very
> low (i.e. grain doesn't show). You can then  darken/lighten it as 
needed and
> use it as a layer above the "correct" image, with a mask to affect 
only the
> parts you want to, playing with the blending mode (overlay, 
multiply and
> soft/hard light being the most effective) to fine tune the results.
>  
> Alessandro
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen Kobrin [mailto:skobrin@h...]
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 2:32
> To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Digital BW] levels and grain
> 
> 
> As a result of all of the posts over the last week about levels and 
> grain, spent some time this afternoon experimenting with a scanned 
> image that degrades easily -- a very dirty white door on a rotting 
> old house.  It did appear that using curves rather than levels (16 
> bit) did lessen image degradation considerably.  Is that an 
artifact 
> of this particular scan or will hold generally?  The only problem 
> with working in levels in 16 bit is that as you cannot use an 
> adjustment level, there is no going back to revise what you have 
done.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
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