Digital BW, The Print

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "gp295" 
<graham@...> wrote:

Hi Graham,

> 
> I'll email the above file to you off-list if that's OK (6.6MB), 
> rather than add another version to the Files area of DB&WTP at this 
> time.

I'd appreciate that. I'll mail you another mail adress that is more 
likely to allow such a size. or perhaps you can put it somewhere on a 
website and post the link?

> But you do seem to have highlighted a more generalised problem than 
> i'd thought was the case. In an off-list message Jeff Randall 
reports 
> that he can also see some banding, albeit in a larger version of 
the 
> target which i sent him for an opinion. 
> 
> Printing this morning directly from the 16bit original (using the 
> workspace profile the image was created in) didn't seem to improve 
> the situation, so my first thought was that there was something 
> fundamentally flawed in the circular targets. But when i looked 
> really closely at the linear ramp below the targets, i found that i 
> could see some very faint banding there too, and the location of 
> these bands did seem to correspond to those that appeared on the 
> circular targets. 
> 
> Would you mind checking the linear ramp on your own prints 
carefully? 
> If you can also see some slight banding there, then it may be that 
> the circular targets are simply doing what they were intended to do 
> (i.e. making things more obvious). 

I did and actually I find it hard to tell on the fairly small samples 
I printed (A6) but on very close inspection there seems to be indeed 
some slight banding in the wedges as well/

> 
> As for what might be causing the banding (linearization, dithering 
or 
> something else entirely), i'm afraid the explanation will need a 
> sharper or more experienced mind than mine. 

Actually, when inspecting the test wedges I made with different QTR 
dithering schemes the banding differed as as well. In the coarser 
schemes ("fast" and "very fast") the banding is more obvious than in 
the other cases. This might support the theory that the dithering is 
the issue.


> And as for what to do 
> about it . . . I mentioned in my original post that i found the 
> targets quite unforgiving and thought the important thing was to 
> produce prints that we're satisfied with. You were clearly happy 
with 
> your profile prior to printing the test-file, so i'd say that's 
what 
> really matters. I'd hate to feel that you were struggling to 
improve 
> a good profile as the result of an image i'd produced.

Yeah. I'm not sure myself how much attention to pay to this. We all 
know there is no magic bullet for optimal print quality. It's the 
results of many small steps. This is definitely a small issue, but 
it's difficult to judge the effect in bigger perspective if you can't 
compare "with" and "without". I must say, I have been staring so much 
with a loupe on the test prints these days, that a slight horizontal 
banding (not related to your test image) has started to annoy me 
more :-(

Joost