Digital BW, The Print

You make some interesting observations here Steve. Yes we are far
less tied to the notion of correct exposure than photographers of
yesteryear and I for one am finding that I can rework negatives I
once printed in the darkroom to a far higher standard in Photoshop.
Those darkroom users who use multigrade papers which enable split
grade printing (ie. changing filtration during the burning of various
areas of a print)have a bit more flexibility than their forebears but
there are still limits.

 Mentally I still use the zone system as a reference point in all I 
do. I am not slavishly tied to it but armed with the accurate spot 
meter on my Contax RX (film dinosaur)I can quickly check the exposure 
value of a shadow area or a white cloud to make sure it will be 
possible to extract a suitable level of detail.

I have found it useful to carry these principles forward into
photoshop where I have subjectively assigned RGB values to key zones.
In fact my method was rather quaint. I carefully studied a finished
print and worked out which zone key areas fell on and back in
photoshop cut squares out of each area and reassembled them into a
row of 10 textured squares. It was then natural to measure the RGB
values of each square in photoshop and assign upper and lower limits
to each. For example the all important Zone 2(very dark shadow with a
hint of detail) came out at RGB 40 to 60 and the similarly zone 8
(textured white) gives way to zone 9 (white with no texture but just
distinguishable from paper white) at an RGB value of 245. 

Whilst this was cobbled together it is very useful to ME because it 
matches MY PERCEPTION of zones. There may be more mathematically 
correct ways to follow this approach but it works for me. My question 
about mid greys really arose from the fact my perceived mid grey was 
rather dark and obviously need ammending. I am currently in the 
process of printing tests for my new R2400 and I have found it useful 
to construct a test chart which contains my zone strip as well as a 
21 step wedge and a colour chart and one of my colour prints. However 
in the end the right result is the one which looks right to you. In 
the past I have often got the tonality right for a test strip taken 
from part of an image only to find when I made the whole image it was 
obviously wrong. Our perception of tonal values is very subjective -- 
you just have to surround a square of mid grey with black and compare 
it to one surrounded by white to prove that. One thing I find 
liberating with Photoshop as opposed to the traditional darkroom is 
that we are not slavishly tied to the film curve characteristics of 
the film we are using (or digital sensor). Maybe at the extremes we 
can't make XP2 look like Technical Pan but we can certainly emulate 
Tri X.

Pete (Dinosaur)


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark" 
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
>
> Steve wrote, in part:
> 
> > The notion of "middle grey" really becomes, in many ways, a bit 
of a moot
> > point with today's ability to edit an image.
> > 
> > ... today we can "shift exposure" (speaking in broad terms) very 
easily.
> 
> I think a big change is the wider availability of high bit depth.  
If you
> move things around too much with a 256 step file, you're liable to 
lose too
> much information and may well end up with an uneven print ramp (too 
few
> steps may look like an increase is grain or as lines in a smooth 
gradient).
> If the file is 16 bit, the 65K steps are so vast compared to what 
we need
> that we have much more wiggle room.
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>