Digital BW, The Print

Bob Frost wrote:

>Peter,
>
>Does it really matter that you can see dots in an inkjet print? 
>

Bob, you seemingly never fail to take a position supporting an OEM EPSON 
option...


If the elimination of dots visible to the naked  eye is relatively 
unimportant, I guess EPSON should have stopped at the 3000 then...  ;-)

You sound like the guy with an old clunker who asks "when do I ever need 
to go 85 mph?"  The fact is, the ability to go that fast or to print 
without visible dots is an indicator of technological prowess and/or 
system health.

The fact is that elimination of  visible dots in inkjet prints has been 
a goal for a LOOOOONG time (witness the work many on this list have done 
to get better and better B&W prints WITHOUT visible dotting).  It has 
been an extremely useful benchmark..  Now some of the BO printing people 
are trying to use a "dots are beautiful" campaign to convince us that we 
were wrong all the time we believed that eliminating dots was a sign of 
progress... I suppose less grainy 400 ISO color film than we had 
available 20 years back  is not an advance either?

To compare it to conventional film: Yes, in certain situations, visible 
grain is a great artistic/aesthetic tool. however, the advance of 
technology allows one to choose whether or not, in many circumstances, 
to have visible grain.  To say "who cares about dots" is  to ignore the 
reality of measuring inkjet technological progress by the approach to a 
naked eye invisible dither.

Another note... Suppose the B&W  image one is planning on printing uses 
grain to effect....  Printing that image in "dotless" B&W allows the 
grain to really demonstrate its patterning.  While printing it through 
the medium of a dotty dither certainly changes the grain pattern's 
visual impact. There's a difference between being forced to have dots no 
matter what one does, and being able to use it as a tool.  Imagine being 
able to ONLY EVER use blue tones to paint. Sure it could be done, and 
might be a nice effect. But, having a whole spectrum of paint to work 
with axiomatically gives one more overall artistic freedom (whether  or 
not one chooses to exercise that freedom is nearly irrelevant).

Finally, with visible dots, we head back to a situation in PhotoShop 
where our on monitor image axiomatically reproduces  the final print 
less faithfully, as you cannot accurately predict and display the 
pattern on-screen in PhotoShop.


 

"Just some guy," and caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSON_Printers/
 
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"