Digital BW, The Print

I too have been following this with interest and it HAS made me 
rethink what I've been doing, I often use dodge / burn on masked 
selection areas, but only ever in highlight / shadow modes, never 
tried the midtone method, it DOES seem to reduce posterisation and 
grain.  

One point, however wonderful dodge/burn and curves may be, how do you 
set your black / white points???  I dont get this, my scans / digital 
images nearly always have unclipped headroom at one or both ends and 
I thought I had to do this via level setting.  Does on do this on a 
global basis to the image first and THEN play with the other tools?

Thanks for clearing up....

Steve




--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "nick90290" 
<NickBrandt@a...> wrote:
> Hi Steve, Allesandro
> 
> Reading all these postings over the last few days on methods of 
> grading that do or don't avoid grain has been fascinating and quite 
a 
> learning experience for me. I wish I'd known about this forum a 
long 
> time ago - I could have saved myself a lot of aggravation. 
Education 
> is enlightenment :).
> 
> Eccentric in the extreme as it is to use dodge and burn right the 
way 
> through to create the majority of my contrast to minimise grain, 
I've 
> done it recently when I was starting over on the images I've 
already 
> graded - images that were overly grainy through my dumb over-use of 
> levels layers. So I knew exactly how I wanted them to look going 
in. 
> 
> It's meant - using largely dodge and burn, and minimal use of 
Curves 
> on selected parts of the image - that I've regraded an image from 
> original scan to completion in less than two hours, often just an 
> hour. On the rare occasion I've overdone it in one area of the 
image, 
> I just layer in that part from the original and work on it again, 
so 
> the use of dodge and burn has not had a terrible finality for me.
> 
> Also, having started as a painter years ago, I love the feel of 
using 
> my Wacom pen and tablet with dodge and burn - I feel like I'm
> painting again! (I could never use the mouse - no fun at all).
> 
> However, for future new photos, I'm going to use Curves layers with 
> the History brush much more. Having said that, however, after 
> experimenting with all the different methods discussed over the 
last 
> couple of days, I still found that the grain was minimised the most 
> when doing it my eccentric way, avoiding cranking up contrast 
through 
> Levels/Curves altogether. However, I do acknowledge that it's kind 
of 
> impractical - to say the least - to be painting the contrast into 
> every bloody blade of grass!
> 
> Nick
> 
> 
> .