Digital BW, The Print

Hi Tyler


> From: Tyler Boley <tyler@...>



> With the latest generation of
> EyeOne and Colorvision products, I can see the difference between
> level 0 and level 1, between level 1 and level 2, etc..

When you say Level 0, 1, 2 etc, what scale are you referring to?


> 
>> I'm not intending to restrict myself to the Epson driver.  When
> reasonably
>> priced RIPs can improve the situation, I'll use them.
> 
> That day has been here for a while. QTR is ridiculously reasonable,
> and IJC/OPM is also very reasonable.

Yes could not agree more.

> There is a lack of consensus about what "linear" is,

Not meaning to not pick but I would have said that "linear" is understood,
but there can be debate as to at which gamma and between which points.  I
would argue we should be linear from dMin to dMax on which I think we all
agree.  The question is where in the scale of 0 to 1 dMin and dMax should be
related to the image file's pixel values.

> and what middle
> gray is. 

This again is a question of gamma, no? In pixel terms, 0 is zero and 1 is
one.  The question is how the rate of change is managed in between.

> Other than that the issues addressed in this thread,
> regarding display characteristics, workingspace, output
> characteristics, their differences, overcoming them one way or
> another, can be dealt with.
> Usually it involves color management in
> some way, gotta get on top of that.
> 

Yes they can be "dealt with".  But it is interesting that they persist to
begin with.  We are in the unusual position of having a very narrow gamut to
work in.  Our work is largely done in a straight single dimension (only
toning takes us into the colour world).  The ultimate would, as you say, be
a colour managed world (without metamerism!) but that seems to be a way
away.  Colour management developed to solve the problem of moving between
devices with different colour gamut, and sophisticated mechanisms for
dealing with different gammas and out of gamut colours were developed in
parallel (else a profile would be useless).  The funny thing is, in B&W we
have chosen to work between two different colour/tonal spaces without the
benefit of a translation tool (colorsync) when we could easily make the two
tonal spaces the same and not have the issue to begin with!


Steve