Digital BW, The Print

I have been following this thread with great interest & decided to do 
a little test myself.  I must say that the results seem to be the 
opposite of what most here seem to have found.

I down loaded & installed the latest demo versions for both Qimage & 
Shortcut Photozoom Pro then did a comparison of prints from the same 
image.  Unless someone can tell me what I might have done wrong, my 
results indicate that neither product produces a better image what I 
am already doing.  Follow and see:

Test images produced by all three products (Qimage, Photozoom, 
Photoshop) were printed in color (I did not want to introduce another 
variable into the mix, aka QTR) using my Epson 2200 and OEM inks.  
Also note that the Raw image I picked was from a Canon 10D & 12x18 is 
about the absolute maximum size from this camera on my Epson 2200.

My current workflow in Photoshop CS2:
Canon Raw to Tiff,
Applied initial Capture sharpening using Photokit Sharpener Pro Plug-
in,
Crop as desired,
Create adjustment layers or layer masks as required,
Adjustments to Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation, Color Balance, etc…
[At this point I saved the image to four files, one for each products 
print]
Re-sampled 1st image to 12x18 at a resolution of 360 in Photoshop 
using bicubic,
Applied creative sharpening using Photokit Sharpener Pro,
Printed using "SP220 EnhancedMatt 2880PK.icc" printer profile,
All print driver corrections turned off

Qimage workflow:
Opened 2nd image from above in Qimage,
Re-sampled image to 12x18 apparently at 720 resolution using Pyramid,
Saved to another file & closed Qimage,
Opened this Pyramid re-sampled image in Photoshop,
Applied Creative Sharpening using Photokit Sharpener Pro,
Saved file & again opened in Qimage,
Selected this image & printed,
took nearly 1 hour for Qimage to do its thing & for the data to 
spool!!!!!!
Sharpening in Qimage appeared to be off,
This print was wayyyyyy over sharpened, so…….
Picked the 3rd image in Qimage and just resized as above & printed.

Photozoom workflow:
Opened 4th image from above I Photozoom,
Re-sampled image to 12x18 apparently at 720 resolution using S-spine,
Left Photozoom Unsharp Mask on as re-sampled image appeared to be way 
to blurry,
Printed.

Results of the four 12x18 prints:
Photoshop print – Best by far.  Sharp & clear.  Admittedly could
be sharper in some areas of the image but normally I can go back into 
Photoshop and re-apply Creative Sharpening using Photokit Sharpener 
Pro to just that area & improve image.

Qimage print – 1st Qimage print looked absolutely phony because
of over sharpening.  Apparently you cannot apply your own sharpening 
in another tool and then go back & print in Qimage and obtain the 
correct sharpening.  2nd Qimage print.  Sharper in certain areas of 
the image, but still over sharp in others.  Enough that the image did 
not look real.

Photozoom – Image was not nearly as sharp as either of the other 
two.  I attempted to sharpen based on the products previews of my 
image but no mater how sharp I attempted to make the image on screen, 
it did not look sharp.  I settled on about half way up for the 
sharpening settings in Photozoom.

So, am I way off base here?  Just not using Qimage & Photozoom 
correctly?  I know I am new to both products but I do not see even a 
savings in time from using these tools.

Puzzled,
Bruce Varner
http://brucevarner.com/


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark" 
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> The dpreview article mentioned below may have been where I saw a 
series of
> images that compared the various methods.  I really could not see
> significant difference among the top half of the approaches, which 
included
> GF.  But, as mentioned before, the nature of the image makes a 
difference.
> 
> I use GF to up-sample images where I must.  It seems to avoid stair-
stepping
> and preserve sharp edges reasonably well. No doubt the state of the 
art has
> advanced now; I have not tried s-spline but have seen dramatic 
comparisons
> to bi-cubic.  
> 
> My conclusion, however, is that these programs are just marginal
> improvements to images that really needed to start as higher 
resolution
> files in the first place.  There is no magic here and no substitute 
for good
> initial information capture and scanning.  The programs cannot, in 
my
> experience, manufacture fine detail that looks real.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com