Digital BW, The Print

Austin,

I think your off-list message was right on the head - Dan's position is one taken in dealing with color photographs.  When working in the B&W world tonality becomes much, much more important - in fact it is primary.  In the color world, color differences and shades would easily overcome or mask any banding problems excepting in broad expanses of the same color.

Maris

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Austin Franklin" <darkroom@...tcom.com>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 8:30 AM
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] 16-bit Scanning: Why?


| Todd,
| 
| > >> As to the argument that you lose tonal values, his response is
| > >> that theoretically you do but in the real world the result is
| > >> identical.  I am not an expert so I will not take sides one way
| > >> or the other.
| > >
| > > The fact that you lose tonal values isn't theoretical, it's
| > just a plain old
| > > fact...kind of like 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples.  It's a
| > simple experiment
| > > you can try your self ;-)
| >
| > Dan's was speaking about photographs, which contain a lot of noise from
| > grain and the like, as opposed to "perfect" computer generated gradients.
| > (Remember, adding noise is the conventional cure for banding). His point
| > isn't that tones don't get dropped, it's that in all his years
| > experience he
| > hasn't seen an instance where that shows up as detrimental in
| > print, and if
| > someone would show him an instance where it did he'd eat his words and
| > publish it in one of his books or magazine articles.
| 
| But I DO see it all the time...most any time I try to do moves to 8 bit
| files, and then print them using Piezo, I end up with posterization.  If I
| need to do moves, I re-scan.
| 
| > He knows histograms, and he knows the math, he knows tones get dropped. He
| > feels between output screening methods, the limited ability of humans to
| > differentiate anywhere near 256 tones, the amount of colors that can be
| > combined from as few as say 50 tones in each channel, etc, add up to
| > deteriorated 8-bit images that might look *slightly* different than their
| > 16-bit counterparts, but not necessarily worse, and sometimes better.
| >
| > No one has stepped up to the plate as yet.
| 
| Well, I know that I see exactly what he claims doesn't with my B&W images
| printed with Piezo...
| 
| Regards,
| 
| Austin
| 
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