Digital BW, The Print

Hi Paul...

> Mike,
> 
> >...
> >Paul, your observations about hiding the origins of digital images 
> >are very interesting. I guess I'm slowly coming to accept that I 
have 
> >to work *with* the look of digital output a bit more, rather than 
> >fighting against it constantly. As an amateur, the main audience 
I'm 
> >trying to please is my own unaided eyes, but they are a fairly 
> >critical audience.
> 
> Visible digital artifacts at normal viewing distance are 
unacceptable to
> most of us, I would guess.  Under normal viewing conditions, I 
think people
> will not see dots with any of the modern dedicated B&W solutions, 
at least
> on matte papers.  My original criteria included the ability to hang 
a
> display 16 x 20 inch digital print, framed and under glass, next to 
my 16 x
> 20 darkroom prints and have the quality be equal.  Even the old 
3000 can do
> this with, for example, Epson Enhanced Matte.

That's good to know, it sounds like I'm going to be happy with the 
results on that basis. Any print I care about is going to be made on 
matte paper and displayed behind glass.

> 
> > For instance I've seen jaggies on an A4 colour 
> >2100 print made from a full-size Minolta 5400 scan.
> 
> That does surprise me a bit.  

In response to that and to Richard's comment, I should say that 
despite pushing 40 I'm lucky enough (although maybe in this context 
maybe I should say "unlucky" ;o) to have very good eyes. When last 
tested a couple of years ago, I was told my vision was still rated 
60/20, and I can focus down to under 8" without squinting. That said, 
most people could *easily* see the jaggies on 300ppi laser prints 
(remember when those seemed high tech?!) and even after the jump to 
600ppi I could still see them on the curves of large characters. Now 
obviously that's pure black against white, which is maximum contrast 
and therefore the worst case. In the 2100 print I referred to there 
was a straight, sharp boundary between a deep red area and a white 
area, running at a shallow diagonal across the page. It doesn't 
surprise me that I could see the pixels on a 360ppi print in a 
situation like this, but to be fair it doesn't happen often. I do 
wonder how much difference I would see between a 360ppi print and a 
720ppi print of a "good" image, however. It's a test I'd like to make 
at some point when I have the opportunity. FWIW I'd come to these 
conclusions of my own accord, even though the mantra of "300ppi is 
enough" get repeated so often that it's take as a fact by many, so 
it's heartening to see there's at least one other person who agrees 
with me:

http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/printer-ppi/

So maybe I'm not crazy after all! <g>

Oh, and regarding the scan, it was done at "full whack" on the 5400 
from a 35mm frame of AstiaF and printed as a full frame, so the final 
scaling gave about 600ppi of information to print from. I guess some 
would say I should have down-rezzed that to 360ppi, but I tend to 
think you'll get less aliasing in the driver if it has more data to 
work from in the first place. It seems to me that scaling from say 
365ppi to 360 would give more artifacts than scaling from 600 to 360 
for example. If someone can tell me a way of getting the Epson driver 
to give *exactly* 1:1 scaling in the final print, I'd love to hear 
about it. It looks to me that there's enough looseness in the way it 
sets margins etc that you can never be sure it's bang on.

> However, one caveat to my statement above
> about not seeing digital artifacts with current systems is that, to 
me, the
> technology is still not at a point where I'm satisfied with the 
glossiest
> print papers.  The pearl and semi-gloss surfaces look excellent, at 
least
> when sprayed with something like Lyson Print Guard, but the high 
gloss
> surfaces do still look less than perfect to me.

It's nice to have decent quality glossies to hand around, but I tend 
to look at them as disposable items. As I said in my earlier mails to 
you, I think the R800 can fill this gap quite nicely. Anything "fine 
art" will go onto matte.

> > I guess I'm the 
> >type of guy who probably won't relax completely until the true on-
> >paper resolution exceeds 1000ppi. ...
> 
> Some claim to be able to see the difference between 360 dpi and 720 
dpi
> printing.  Frankly, I cannot see it on the matte papers that I 
generally use
> for serious display prints.  (I have not tested this on glossy 
papers.)
> 

Doesn't that mean that you're never going to get the out-and-out 
sharpness on matte paper? But then again, already EEM looks pretty 
freakin' sharp to me with the standard inkset so maybe it is more to 
do with the way the ink settles onto the surface of the gloss media.

> The machines are not perfect, and I expect them to get better.  
However, I
> clearly think they are good enough that, overall and on average, my 
digital
> prints are better than my darkroom prints.  I guess for me, that 
was the
> cross-over point.  I went with the approach that, for me, produced 
the most
> satisfying final product.

So many people are saying that, I'm ready to be wowed by the results. 
Here's hoping! I just heard my offer has been accepted for the place 
I'm trying to buy, so that's another step towards having room to 
house my full B&W production suite. Exciting times...

All the best,

-= mike =-