Digital BW, The Print

My question is about why some plug-ins like the BW workflow by fred miranda seem to really degrade image. Specifically for this plug is waht happens to the reds and also the shadow areas. They really get blotchy and noisy, like its a four bit file or something. Seriously, when working with a 16 bit file from a 14 bit raw file from my Minolta A1, anything that was red becomes badly badly blocked up. I thought it was simply that the reds were clipped or something so I put up with it. Then As an experiment, I went back to the channel mixer, (which I used to use) and used the settings of 68, 24, 8, on an image and ...perfect red conversion, and perfect shadows. HUH? This was using the same raw file by the way. I do like the way the miranda plug adds 100 iso grain, but geez....I'm going to have to reprint some things that are now unaceptable to me. By the way the miranda plug claims to be a 16 bit plug......Doug M


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