Digital BW, The Print

I have to agree. I think we have tended to over romanticize
characteristics of gelatin silver and platinum printing because the
beginnings of inkjet monochrome in years past were so truely dreadful.
These days it is simply another ball game altogether and the quality
and creativity is already possible to those who work at it.

Over my mantle is a beautifully printed Jerry Uelsman silver print
done on Ilford paper and slightly selenium toned. As perfect as this
print is it changes from light source to light source in regard to
print color (obs in the paper base?) and has no more unusual color
content than my QTR produced UC prints. Personally I think what we can
do in Photoshop with these new inksets is simply amazing and we're
lucky to be where we are. Actually the technology is superior to what
most of us are even producing with it. Right now black and white
inkjet is better than darkroom imaging in most respects and very soon
it will be so much better that a year or two from now people will have
forgotten that the darkroom ever existed at all.

John  


 I compared a new digital r2400 ABW print and my 
> best effort Ilford Multigrade selenium toned print. My reaction was 
> that the Ilford print looked surprisingly green in comparison under 
> halogen lighting (I never would have predicted this). I also note that 
> there is some metamerism in the Ilford print from Halogen to daylight. 
> This sort of blows my mind. I am not so sure we have EVER been looking 
> at "pure" black tones in our traditional printing....
> 
> Food for thought.