Digital BW, The Print

Clayton

I am not a technical guy per se.  I have only owned my own computer for two
years.  Previously I just had one at the office, never had to maintain it,
and had no idea that I could print my own photos on a range of paper.  When
I had to buy my own laptop for home I asked a friend about Laser printers
and he said "since you are into photography you should consider an inkjet".
He wasn't even a photographer!  How things change at the turn of a few
words.  I have just tried to learn what I can and almost all of it has been
from this list for which I am very grateful.

As for BO with 1.8 gamma or 2.2 gamma, it really is a very basic statement
that I was making.  If your printer had the same "space" as your "workspace"
and "display" space, ie would reproduce the same density for any particular
pixel value (8, 16 bit or otherwise), then none of this topic would be an
issue - we would see and print and store the same thing.  The closer the
spaces are, the less the mismatch and hence the lesser is the "matching
monitor and print" issue.  Since most people work in Gray Gamma 2.2 for B&W
it would make sense to have a print space gamma as close to this as
possible.  Choosing 1.8 rather than 2.2 in the Epson driver simply makes the
mismatch worse (and, by corollary, the adjustment of the image needs to be
greater to get satisfactory prints vs if you had selected 2.2).

You can see the extent of this greater mismatch by looking at the results I
posted here:

http://homepage.mac.com/stevekale/stevekale2/FileSharing37.html

Now the test I did started with a Lab space step wedge rather than Gray
Gamma 2.2 but the point would remain the same - Lab doesn't have a single
value gamma but the best approximation is 2.2.

Steve


> From: Clayton Jones <cj@...>


> 
> Steve, I must confess that I am of the non-technical inclination, and
> my eyes glaze over when I read your posts.  I respect your level of
> knowledge, but also recognize that I simply have neither the time nor
> inclination to go that route.  After over a year of frustration and
> experiments I arrived at the understanding and methods I describe in
> the articles.  They allow me to work quickly, intuitively, and
> effectively, without all the fuss and bother, and I am busy living
> happily ever after, making and selling lots of prints which
> regularly bring comments about their beauty, etc.  I also regularly
> get email from other happy users thanking me for showing them a way
> that works for them.  So I hope that as much as you want others to
> understand your point of view, that you will also recognize that
> simply changing the monitor to match the print and getting on with the
> work of photography is a perfectable suitable approach for many
> people.
> 
> You also mentioned the fact that I recommend an Epson driver gamma
> setting of 1.8, and you think it should be 2.2.  I cannot answer to
> this in theoretical terms which might satisfy you.  All I can say is
> that I'm a practical realist.  I tried both, and found that 1.8
> allowed more easily attainable WYSIWYG using the method I describe.
>