Digital BW, The Print

Bob, Costa,

>>>FWIW, the 4000 is widely considered to be the best BO machine
>>>because of it's more random dither pattern.
 
>>How can something be 'more' random? It is either random or it is 
>not random! 

My words were an attempt to describe what I see.  Other than the 4000,
the best looking BO prints I've seen come from the 2200.  The 4000
prints are a tad less grainy looking.  Under a loupe the 2200 prints
show little groups of dots that look like interwoven short curved
lines with similar orientation.  I call them "squigglies".  The 4000
prints have what looks like just a random sprinkling of dots that
don't form any sort of repeatable pattern.  The 2200 prints are made
up of groups of dots, the 4000 prints are made up of just dots.  FWIW,
my old 870 BO prints and many 1280 ones I've seen were made of shorter
and different shaped strings of dots than the 2200, with more varied
orientation.  Plus, on the 870 and some other printers, each of the
"dots" was actually a pair of tiny dots close together.

The 4000 BO prints always had a slightly more refined look about them.
 My use of "more random" was an attempt, in as few words as possible,
to describe this lack of any recognizable pattern, strings, squigglies
or groups, which I think of as "less random".  I'm not sure how
technically correct this use of "random" is.


>Not exactly. Random processes generate different distributions. For 
>example, a normal distribution (bell curve) has many individual
>samples near the average value, but a uniform distribution has 
>individual samples evenly spaced across all possible values. 

Ok, makes sense.

 
>More interesting for printing is that the distribution is not
>really random, just constructed to avoid obvious patterns. If you 
>actually use random patterns then you get clumps of points 
>or holes (where there are few points).  Either looks uneven and bad.

So it seems my use of "more random" and "less random" as described
above is actually the opposite of what I am trying to describe, is
that correct?

Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm


"It really depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.
- Bill clinton