Digital BW, The Print

CDTobie@... wrote:
> So while I appreciate the distinction you are making, its just not something that end users are seeing when they look at prints. When I got involved in B&W, my criteria was that I wanted to produce low metamerism, long-life black and white, with OEM systems, but I wanted to control the linearity, neutrality, and other factors so that I could achieve dead neutral, extremely linear, creamy smooth results, and adjust them as I saw fit from there. Now that I'm getting that, the convenience, simplicity, and control it offers make it even more powerful than I expected, and the results are more exciting then I expected as well.
>
> C. David Tobie
> Product Technology Manager
> ColorVision Business Division
> DataColor Inc.
> CDTobie@...
> www.colorvision.com
With all due respect, you have a horse in this race while Tyler and most 
of the rest of us do not. In order for you to sell your product (which 
you have been doing a lot lately) you have to convince them of the 
quality of prints from your system. But constantly talking it up won't 
improve the quality.

What Tyler describes is visible, and from "normal viewing distances" in 
my experience. More importantly, my experience with watching people in 
galleries is that this "normal viewing distances" argument is vaguely 
ridiculous. People walk right up to photographs and look at them from 
inches away. They want to see just how detailed it is. At least that's 
what they tell me when I ask them.

There are plenty of people out there who think that four grays aren't 
enough to get optimum smoothness from their prints. They've moved on to 
six and seven grays. These people aren't going to be satisfied with one 
or two or even three grays. They certainly aren't going to be satisfied 
with the blending of color dots to produce tonal levels not available 
from the grays alone.

Many times over the last five years (has it only been five years?) I've 
listened to marketing pitches that claim company X or company Y can make 
"museum quality" B&W prints from color inksets. While they have been 
good, they haven't yet been excellent. The majority of the market may 
well be satisfied with good. What I'm waiting for is excellent, and that 
evaluation has to first come from people I trust, who have a 
demonstrated track record of making outstanding B&W inkjet prints, and 
who don't stand to profit from their evaluation.

When people like Tyler tell me that a product is worth pursuing, I'll 
look into it.
-- 
Bruce Watson
/www.AchromaticArts.com
/