Digital BW, The Print

Hello Katherine:

Unless you intend to send your digital negative out to a service 
bureau, image-setter negs, it is unnecessary
for you to convert your image to a bitmap.  Your image was much to big, 
and in the wrong
mode, bitmap, for Dan's inkjet method; that's why your computer choked 
on such a huge file.
You confused two different processes as delineated by Dan, designed for 
two separate output
methods for creating digital internegs.

The reason that they look grainy: you converted from bitmap back to 
RGB.  For the inkjet
process, You really never need to be out of RGB unless you brought the 
file in as a Greyscale first,
or you wanted to do some adjustments to the file in LAB mode.  If you 
used either of these methods, you must
first return to RGB mode before you print out the negative.

I would recommend that you visit Dan's website www.danburkholder.com.
There he now has an updated CD for printing with more recent inkjet 
printers than he covered in
his book. There you will also find updated templates with updated 
curves that will help you simplify
printing negatives using the inkjet process.

Regards,
Peter


On Jun 14, 2005, at 12:35 PM, Katherine wrote:

> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Katherine"
> <october_air@h...> wrote:
>> Hello, I'm new here.  My name is Katie.
>> I chose to explore digital negatives as my independent study in
>> undergrad school.  None of my professors have used the process, so as
>> you might imagine, I'm going to have a million questions!
>>
>> I'm following Dan Burkholder's book for printing with inkjet onto
>> transparency film, contact printing onto silver gelatin (fiber based).
>>  It sounded like the 1200 bitmap dither method worked best for this,
>> so I formatted my image using that process.  But then I got confused
>> when it came time to either colorize or make a color table (using
>> orange ink instead of black).
>>
>> I used the color table method by switching back over to RGB mode.
>> Then I could not get my image to print because the computer would just
>> freeze up.  I contact a friend who informed me that 1200 dpi is way
>> too much for any printer to handle.  Then I noticed the page where
>> Burkholder says that 480 is a good resolution for silver printing.  So
>> I converted my image back to 480dpi, and had no trouble printing then.
>>
>> Here's my results from the darkroom (although horrible scans):
>>
>> Straight Print
>> http://www.katiegregory.com/straightprintsm.jpg
>>
>> With a #5 Filter
>> http://www.katiegregory.com/5filtersm.jpg
>>
>> They look awfully grainy to me.  Which leads me to ask; did I follow
>> those steps right?  I get lost in that book easily.  Any other
>> suggestions are greatly appreciated!
>