Digital BW, The Print

> Looks really nice, and a lot of work to prepare for.  How many prints
> are at the RAC show?   I like the way the long one looks along the stairs.
> 
> Congrats and hope it goes well.
> 
Thanks, there are 30 in all, mostly ~26"x16"  -- 3 from 35mm film, rest from 1Ds (all 
printed with epson enh matt /9600 / imageprint)  I often print on heavier (warmer) papers, 
but the subjects for these images worked well with the deep blacks and bright white of the 
enhanced matt.

I printed one at 78"x43" which is from a scanned bit of 35mm Tri-X :-) and one at 60"x43" 
from a 1Ds raw image. They are across from a balcony, so nobody can get closer than 
about 6 feet ;-)

From a technical point of view, many of the images are entirely new. I went back to my 
original film scans and raw files to get the benefits of my greater experience and newer 
software (I used CS2 for everything). All of the colour and some of the BW images were 
converted from raw using DxO - slow, but I think worth it when you are only doing a few 
images.

Everything was done at 16 bit, particularly worthwhile with the BW, since some of the 
dodging and burning was done with some pretty steep masked curve layers. Colour to BW 
conversion (for the 1Ds files) was either channel mixer or Nik Convert to BW. Resizing was 
all done using CS2 bicubic smoother - getting the big prints right was getting the right 
mix of pre-sharpening (both in conversion and immediately after), resizing and 
sharpening for print, with most adjustments done after the resizing. I took several small 
critical parts of the converted raw images and tried different combinations of settings, and 
produced A5 test prints. Quite a bit of effort, but then I don't do many prints that size :-) 

Sharpening was with Focus Magic (say 25% at 1 pixel after raw conversion) and final print 
sharpening used Nik Sharpener pro (usually selectively masked, so clouds and skies kept 
clean and smooth). Several pictures also got a bit of USM to give them a bit more depth 
(5-10%  at ~200 radius)

For the two 26x16 prints from film, I found that PS smart sharpen was very good at getting 
the increase in local contrast I was after, without bumping up the grain or generating 
many artefacts. 

Quite a lot of work to do (I turned down several bits of commercial work during the last 10 
days) but really useful to see just how much software (and my skills) have come on in the 
last year or two.

bye for now

Keith