Digital BW, The Print

> From: Clayton Jones <cj@...>

> 
>> ...requires the reader to have an understanding of either X or Y
>> as a basis for the comparison.
> 
> True, and exactly the same can be said for a spectro reading.  I give
> Eboni BO on PR a rating of 5.0, you give it 1.66.  The only way any
> reader could have an impression of what either of those numbers means
> is to have seen an Eboni BO PR print (or in the case of the review, an
> Eboni BO print on one of the listed papers).

Nope.  With a density reading or better yet a full LAB reading one can bring
up a patch in Photoshop on a well calibrated monitor and compare it with
anything you want.  Much more useful.  It's done by people millions of times
every day.  Such goals are the very basis of colour science and colour
management.  Yesterday I had a conversation with a guy sitting miles away in
Canada.  We were chatting about tonality and in particular coolness in a
greyscale ramp.  When I told him the readings I was getting the first thing
he did was to fill a patch in PS with the reading I mentioned.  He could
then visualise with reasonable accuracy what I was seeing.  I say reasonable
because of course neither of us is "the standard observer" and there would
have been many other factors coming into play.  Nonetheless, we were able to
communicate much more effectively than we would have been able to without
the colour science model we used for measurement.

>I spent years learning and internalizing the technical.  It is the
>intuitive and artistic side of photography in which I am now pursuing
>more deeply.

I would say you are caught betwixt and between.  You conduct extensive
testing and even attempt without instrumentation to grade and rate your
results.  (Doing so is an innate human condition.)  Your work would be that
much more informative if you used commonly accepted scales that can be
communicated and replicated elsewhere.  But hey that's up to you.  I simply
suggested we could help you make better use of the time you already commit.

But the broader point I was trying to make is that while I don't agree with
Shilesh's provocative remark that 'the data is King', and frankly when
pushed I think he would agree that he simply said that to be provocative, I
do agree with the point he was making: that using instrumentation to provide
readings with agreed scales so that those qualities can be
replicated/simulated elsewhere is a powerful communication tool when we're
not all in the same room (thank god or randomness).  We can't measure every
sensation and all people are different.  But people should be thankful for
the numbers as they allow us to communicate much more clearly than without
them.