Digital BW, The Print

on 12/3/01 11:54 AM, Julian Thomas wrote:

> .
>> 
>> That you have to make the tweak on an image by image basis does seem
>> unusually cruel though. Good luck.
>> 
> 
> Thanks! Although I think I've cracked it now. PS6 softproof really helps.
> One of the problems with trying ot adjust old files is that the histogram
> gets messed up after a while - I'm too lazy to scan again though. Maybe I
> should keep 'raw' scans.
> 

Exactly what I do. I scan raw , dupe, save save a raw copy and globally
adjust the dupe in 16bit, then dupe. Save the 16 bit file and convert the
dupe to 8bit for local corrections and "finalizing", all edits done on
adjustment layers, which stores your edits. At this point I have three
files.

All the raw scans I ultimately will backup and store off the hard drive for
space considerations. The 16bit globally adjusted file, and the 8bit "final"
file I keep handy.

Now, if I ever decide my 8bit file got too tonally deteriorated I can load
all those adjustment layer edits back onto my 16bit file. (time consuming
but not hard). Thus one ends up using the convenience of the 8bit
painting/masking tools and applies them to a 16bit file. Your final file,
when/if converted down to 8bits will have a "perfect" histogram.

It's really the best of both worlds, and you never need scan again, until
you upgrade scanners of course, because you can never do better than a raw
scan. The rest (scanner drivers) is just software enhancement of a raw scan
anyway. And no scanner driver has the precision and flexibility as Photoshop
for "developing" your scan (unless they provide a pixel by pixel preview of
their effect like PS does).

That being said, it certainly is a more cumbersome approach, and on
virtually all occasions that I was getting tonal oddities that I thought
were attributable to insufficient bit depth (IOW, over working an 8bit
file), those same oddities remained in the 16bit version. But it is a very
safe and flexible approach!

Some of these tonal oddities I intend to address separately when I find the
energy...

Todd