Digital BW, The Print

* -----Original Message-----
* From: frankg_photo [mailto:fh.gross@sympatico.ca] 
* Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 8:33 PM
* To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
* Subject: [Digital BW] smoth transition of tones problem
* 
* 
* try what I may I cant get rid of the lack of smoothness between the 
* tones in the cloudy sky section of a landscape shot. There's no point 
* in posting a jpeg for you to see 'cos it looks good on screen even at 
* 100% view but prints out like - i'm not even sure how to 
* describe it - 'mottled' isn't exactly it but its close. This 
* problem is most 
* evident in the area where a darkish cloud texture meets the lighter 
* sky texture.
* 
* I did my scan and most of the initial corrections in 16bit and then 
* some in 8. I'm working with Win98SE and PS7 and an 1160 printer with 
* MIS sepia>neutral inkset on photorag.
* 
* One symptom which may provide a clue for solving the problem, for 
* someone, is that I had Layers for darkening/burning in  the top of 
* the image and the corners. The problem was excessive. Then I 
* eliminated each of those layers (lighteninig the image segments) and 
* the problem reduced or just became less evident
* 
* I also have a High Pass sharpening layer - could that be it ?
* 
* I just looked at Image>Histogram and find it pretty "comb" like - is 
* this it ? Is it 'posterization' ? Should I go back to the 16 bit scan 
* and try to do more there before converting to 8 and printing ?
* 
Frank,

You can get away with some or a lot of "combing" in the histogram depending
upon the nature of the image. In your current situation I would suggest
applying your adjustments to a 16-bit version of the image and see what
happens

If you still have the problem then you may not be getting a perfectly linear
response with the RGB separation curves in the tonal range that is crucial
to your sky. One way around this is to try a different separation curve or
use two or more separation curve layers with different curves and different
opacity (adding to 100%) so that the effect of the curve is blended. 

Beyond that you might want to take a look at the scan or scanning process to
see it anything was done that might have damaged the data. Try printing the
unadjusted scan file and see what you get.

Martin Wesley
http://www.carolyn.cc/Guests/MartinWesley/pages/MW_01.html
http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html