Digital BW, The Print

I believe the answer to your perspective, which is a quite reasonable one by
the way, is that our expectations should be greater because of technology.
We were capable of putting a man on the moon a long time ago and digital
printing is surely not as demanding a challenge as Œrocket science¹.

In color printing today you can obtain the expectation of prints that match
the image on screen to a reasonable extent, so why not for black and white
prints? Although with color, missing the mark is sometimes the case because
of the inherent perceptual difference between a reflective print and the
transmitted light image of a display.

The solution to the challenge is how the system transmits the data that is
displayed to the printer. That is a problem because we are not printing with
black and white printers, but color printers. Maybe we need to direct our
attention more to getting a true monochrome black and white printer instead
of trying to make a horse out of a zebra?

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




On 10/17/04 5:11 AM, "B. Campbell" <bellis60@...> wrote:

> 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 Zakia¹s 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
> Orealistically². 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 mind¹s 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@...m
> 
> (remainder of thread deleted in the interest of brevity)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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