Digital BW, The Print

> From: brad1gold [mailto:brad@...]
>
> I am printing on a 2200 with MIS inks. Regarding conversions to
> grayscale from RGB files, what are the virtues of using B&W
> conversion plug-ins such as offered by Fred Miranda, PhotoRetouche
> or The Imaging Company's "Convert to Black and White" opposed to the
> various techniques for making the conversion within CS?

I've not tried any of the plug-ins, because I'm happy with the CS tools. But
as a side note, it's important to understand that since conversion to B&W
involves flattening a 3D space into a 2D one, and therefore discards
information, there is no single best way to do this that applies to all
images. Different parts of the information are important in different
images. Some images destined for monochrome have a lot of important
character represented as color differences, which disappear unless you're
careful which dimension you flatten the 3D space along.

So my point is that plug-ins may well be useful, by giving you better knobs
to twiddle, but don't expect some magic solution that absolves you of the
need to make judgements about where the important information lies,
individually in each image.

--

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...