Digital BW, The Print

> 
> John - I am suprised that Qimage had a "destructive" effect.  What
> settings are you using?

I don't find Qimage destructive with color, just unnecessary and
awkward unless high production is the goal...but B&W (per this Group)
seems to require more care than can be delivered through Qimage... 

For proofing or mass production (eg cards) or for production prints to
which I return frequently, Qimage is handy. 

Do I read you correctly: is convenience is the only reason you'd
advocate Qimage ?

...except for the fractals alternatives, it seems to me to add nothing
positive beyond convenience...

I agree that smart sharpening can be convenient, but I don't find it
sufficiently refined to be relied upon routinely with B&W (this is a
B&W Group after all :-)  ...I'm more comfortable with USM. 

USM is a wonderful and revolutionary tool, more important IMO than Ice
(for example) but it does require more care/skill/restraint/patience,
and maybe test printing, than does smart sharpen.

I've not tried Focalblade but I have seen commentary to the effect
that it ads nothing Vs CS2's tools...

...what's your take on that? 

How about a small plug for Focalblade? :-)



> 
> It should be easily possible to turn off Qimage's automatic
> sharpening.  One of the issues with sharpening in Qimage is that there
> a number of places it can be done.  The most useful IMHO is the
> "sharpening equaliser", but this only works for colour images.  With
> B&W, you are limited to USM and final print smart sharpening.  I am
> inclined to agree that this lacks the finesse of something like
> Focalblade in PSCS2.  Certainly for my negative scan I sharpened using
> Focalblade and then applied a small amount of final print smart
> sharpening.  For images from a digital camera, final print smart
> sharpening seems adequate.
> 
> For me the big advantage of Qimage is not having to save resized
> copies of images for printing.  I can print directly from master
> images.  However this benefit is offset by the fact that the colour
> managment engine in Qimage does not deal at all well with the QTR
> profiles.  Thus for B&W images I save a master, plus a copy of the
> master in QTR-gray-matte.
> 
> F_P
>