Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Tyler Boley" 
<tyler@...> wrote:
>
> Here's what I AM talking about-
> From a purely technical standpoint, writing complex and nuanced
> monochrome data to paper, more grays and/or blacks than currently
> available from OEM solutions (at least the Epson K3s) are still
> better. Demonstrably and significantly. 

Allow me to toss out a curve ball, & some related questions running 
through my mind lately: It's quite obvious that getting 60-70 or 
even 80% of maximum available quality out of any system is 
relatively easy. It's always that last little bit at the top that 
takes a disproportionate amount of effort, and it seems we on this 
list are primarily concerned with that area. If we could 
somehow 'increase the headroom' we could perhaps improve our quality 
without quite so much difficulty. 
So how in our case does one raise the ceiling of available quality? 
Even if you use 6, 7, or 27 shades of gray, at some point it will do 
no further good, because we are ignoring the most basic and 
fundamental limit inherent to our system: 256 shades of gray. We are 
stuck with translating a almost infinite palette of grays into 256 
shades, and then somehow trying to reproduce that palette with 
equipment and software designed to print 256 shades. Remember, this 
system was set up many years ago by non imaging related techies who 
thought no one could (or more to the point NEEDED) to see more 
subtle gradation. OK, there were other reasons too, like processor 
and memory limits, etc. If there were software that could give us 
e.g., 512 shades of gray, and drivers that could exploit that, would 
that be a dramatic improvement? My feeling is that it would 
constitute the difference between medium format and 4x5 or even 
8x10. I suppose more to the point, however: is this possible, or is 
it analogous to switching to hydrogen from fossil fuels?
Does printing in 12 or 16 bit with drivers equipped for that come 
out to about the same thing, or not? 

Steven Karafyllakis