Digital BW, The Print

djon43 wrote:


> I've had occasion repeatedly to quantify photo technicians'
> "subjective" evaluations of color and density, found them to be
> comparably accurate to photometers in the main, and more accurate in
> the case of the most skilled tier (perhaps the top 20% in a top lab). 

This makes sense. These people were probably trained and indoctrinated 
by highly skilled technicians with years or decades of previous 
experience, perhaps even by technicians from the previous generation; 
and are presumably highly experienced themselves. I would certainly 
expect good training, experience, and practice to improve their skills 
with the medium.


> Preoccupation with peripheral technology and methodology by the wrong
> people (perhaps meaning real photographers) can be as distracting and
> counter-productive ....

Perhaps. But there are certain things that aren't being controlled for:

(1) How many digital imaging technicians do we have who were mentored 
and trained by people who had a career lifetime's prior experience with 
technology?

(2) Were those trainers themselves trained by the previous generation of 
technicians?

(3) Do our current printers on inkjet mediums themselves have a career 
lifetime of experience at making accurate relative judgments of color 
end density in an emissive medium (e.g., crt monitors) as well as media 
that have uncommon characteristics (e.g., metamerism), and of doing so 
from perception, without frequent use of instrumentation?

I think your point is really good, and perfectly applicable to printers 
of long-standing at the high end of the tier - maybe Cone would be an 
example. I doubt that most of the printers on this list have a similar 
base of training and long experience, and I think past perceptual 
psychology experiments suggest that perceptual accuracy can improve as a 
result of these influences. Perhaps I'm mistaken, though.

I've kind of stayed out of this because, as primarily a technical 
photographer, instrumentation and a detailed understanding of the 
workflow (right down to the math involved), instrumentation is my life. 
So I'm strongly biased. But if people are getting prints they like, I 
don't really care how they get there.

-- 
Jeff Medkeff
Eagle River, Alaska