Digital BW, The Print

Anthony G. Atkielski wrote:
> The Wogster writes:
> 
> 
>>For archiving though, where you are not looking at the image on a
>>regular basis, you can use other compression mechanisms.  For example if
>>you can compress a 600MB file down to say 50MB for archiving, and then
>>decompress it again later, who cares?  Even if it takes an hour to 
>>compress/decompress.
> 
> 
> Agreed.  But what file formats would be in this category?
> 
> Theoretically, you could compress most image files enormously with no
> loss, given time and space to do an absolutely optimal compression.
> I've never heard of a file format that is designed for this purpose,
> though.
> 

The best I have seen is around 50% compression, having tried a few 
general purpose compression formats, with a ~6MB TIFF file, I would 
expect that a compression format designed specifically, would have 
better luck, even in a lossless form.

The real issue comes down to, if your scanning a 4x5 negative, and then 
post processessing, do you need to store the files forever on the 
computer? As long as you still have the negative, then you can always 
rescan and repeat the processing can be done again, to give a new result.

When I did printing is the darkroom, I rarely kept printing notes, other 
then that on the back of the contact print, so I knew where to start 
from.  This was often because, the print I wanted 6 months or 3-4 years 
later might be very different, considering the mood I was in.

We sometimes forget in print photograpy that, like music and theatre, 
the art is double staged, the negative (or initial digital image) is the 
symphony (or script), the print is the performance.

W