Digital BW, The Print

I've been reading this thread without understanding some of ithe technical
stuff but the basic gist seems to be complaints about the difficulty in
getting a first print to match a monitor, thus sometimes requiring that a
second print be made.

I'm perhaps coming from a different perspective than some participants
because I don't photograph or print for a living but the notion that this is
a problem surprises me. It wasn't unusual at all for me to go through ten or
fifteen iterations in a darkroom to get my final print. For my first try at
printing a negative in my darkroom my usual output for a print I planned to
exhibit was roughly one final print per three to four hour darkroom session,
sometimes  longer. And most of that time was spent doing drudge work like
setting up the chemicals, jiggling trays, moving dodging and burning tools
around, washing, toning, drying, cleaning up, etc. Of the three or four
hours, maybe a half hour at the most was spent doing anything creative, the
rest of the time was manual labor any idiot could have done if properly
instructed.

So I'm supposed to be concerned that after maybe a half hour to an hour of
creative work on the computer to get the image to look right on the monitor,
I sometimes have to push the print button twice to get a final digital
print?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David B. Brooks" <fotografx@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <dlruckus@...>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 12:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Digital BW] How reliable/ precise is your b&w print workflow?



Duane,

I began my professional photo career in 1952 so I am probably a bit more the
cantankerous old f..., as well as having an inclination to be a gadfly.

>>It still seems to me that either device requires reduction in its overall
density range to try to match a print on paper. At least to
> me the visual appearance of an image on screen-no matter how carefully
> calibrated- seems more luminous than the resultant print.<<

Even if the print density range and the luminance range of a display is the
same, and with a CRT it is very close, the perceptual effect of light
reflected from a print image compared to an image transmitted by light will
never seem perceptually equivalent. This is a topic that was researched and
discussed at some length in Todd Zakia\ufffds book on Vision and Perception For
Photographers published by RIT Press. It was also analyzed and discussed in
depth from another perspective by Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media.

Interestingly, about a dozen years ago there were high quality monochrome
portrait CRT monitors made primarily for the DTP market which had a white
background with a black image (text) which displayed B&W photographs very
Orealistically\ufffd. It is maybe too bad these monitors are no longer made<S>.

The real beauty with digital is that you can fine-tune the image file to a
high degree of precision and restructure its characteristic curve ideally,
as well as do all of the image manipulation you would do with burning and
dodging, before ever clicking the Print button. Then it should be relatively
easy to obtain in ink and paper exactly what you expect in your mind\ufffds eye.
Other than the limitation imposed by color inks, I think maybe we might be
making the solution harder to attain than it needs to be. I know Paul Roark
sees it somewhat from that perspective. However, there is a lot of trial and
error experience and the craft skill that derives from that in what he does.

Regards, David B. Brooks
Shutterbug Magazine
E-mail: fotografx@...

(remainder of thread deleted in the interest of brevity)