Digital BW, The Print

Hello Tomek,

>I tried BO printing on my Epson 1280 and Epson Archival Matte paper. 
>I chose 2880ppi (only available with glossy paper). It was a
>portrait picture. I can't see any dots but unfortunately the 
>tonality is much flatter than the picture should be and, worst of 
>all, I can see gradation of three densities of grays instead of 
>smooth tonal transitions or the model's cheek. I couldn't find
>anything about such problems in the archives and I'd want to ask 
>for advice on what to do about it. I generally like the idea of BO
printing but, apart from more visible dots, I get better prints form
my lowly Epson Color 760 than from Epson Photo 1280. Am I making any
mistake in settings or is this the nature of the printer?

It probably isn't a printer issue.  BO's greatest weakness is in
smooth areas in the upper mid tones, which makes portraits a bigger
challenge.  I have also found that the image itself makes a big
difference, especially how it is handled in photoshop.  I have made
some excellent BO portraits from scanned Tri-X negs, but am having
more difficulty with digicam images.  I don't know yet if it is the
nature of the sensor, or the lens I'm using, or what...I'm still
learning.

It helps to keep the image in 16-bit mode because it helps avoid the
histogram combing that can lead to posterization.  BO is capable of
subtle tonal transitions, so if there are sudden transitions in the
print then they are probably in the image.  I've found digital
printing to be merciless in this respect.  These printers will print
exactly what is in the image.

I recently printed a portrait in both BO and UT7.  It was a digicam
image, and the skin tone issues were present in both versions.  The BO
version emphasized them more.  It was a every difficult print and I
chose UT7 for the final version because it de-emphasized the skin tone
problem.  Other parts of the image looked better in the BO version.

HTH.


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm