Digital BW, The Print

B. Campbell wrote:

> "Yet, if you do a good scan and
> set your black and white points well, you get a full range scan with
> beautiful tonality from darkest shadows to brightest highlights. This
> scan prints fairly easily on an inkjet printer, without blown out
> highlights (which are virtually undefined in this workflow)."
>
> Everything you say here makes sense. But I have a couple questions. 
> What do
> you mean by "set your black and white points well?" I would have thought
> that if the shadows are placed on Zone III in your example so that the
> flower falls on Zone XI with normal development, then there wouldn't 
> be much
> choice in how you place the black and white points if the goal is to 
> print
> with texture/detail in both the shadows and the highlights. 



What I do is to set my black point to "film base + fog" so that I get 
every bit if information I can from the film. White point is set just 
beyond the Dmax of the image. IOW, I don't clip either end. This usually 
means that I have to use the levels control in Photoshop to fine tune 
the image because I end up with a few empty levels on either end. These 
I just chop off. I do this in Photoshop because it allows finer control 
than my scanner software. You might be able to set your white and black 
points exactly where they need to be with your scanner software though.

The point is, don't clip the image data in scanning.

> Second, what do
> you mean when you say the highlights are "virtually undefined in this
> workflow"? I thought the whole point of what you're saying here is 
> that the
> negative actually contains texture and detail in zones well above Zone 
> VII
> (which is correct, you can actually get up into Zones XIII or even XIV 
> and
> still see some tonal separation in the negative) and that textire and 
> detail
> can be brought out in the print without minus development when you 
> scan and
> print digitally. So why are the highlights "virtually undefined" in this
> workflow?



Not highlights. *Blown out* highlights. If I didn't make that clear in 
my post, I apologize.

Blown out highlights in traditional photo papers are just analog 
clipping. If your scan isn't clipped, your print won't be either, 
assuming that you didn't cook the film to the point that it can't cope 
either (I've done that by mistake, and it's and ugly sight ;-)