Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Austin 
Franklin" <darkroom@i...> wrote:

> There's more to it than that.  You can increase the
> number of available inks, which increases the number
> of tones per unit area.  Or, you can decrease the area 
> and get the same number of tones...or some combination
> there of.


And in the original posting, which you have left out, I
specified ALL those - namely a paper surface area of one pixel at 300 
PPI, printer resolution of 2880 DPI, Black Only, and a dithering 
algorithm that allows the ability to distinguish two adjaecent pixels 
at 300 PPI/


> 
> > > If you want more tones, you simply use more area.
> >
> > I.e., less resolution.
> 
> How is using more area the same as less resolution?

If the image resolution is 300 PPI and you average your dither over 
the area of 4 pixels (2 vertical, 2 horizontal) then you can no 
longer resolve those 4 pixels.   You end up with ONE averaged pixel 
value, but because you used all that area you can represent its 
average value with very good precision.   If you can't resolve those 
4 distinct 300 PPI pixels ON THE PAPER then you don't have 300 PPI 
resolution.

In other words if you are going to faithfully print a 300 PPI image 
you need a dithering algorithm that can render DISTINCT values for 
two adjacent pixels at 300 PPI.    And the Epson driver DOES do that, 
as you can see if you examine prints from the 2200 under 
magnification.