Digital BW, The Print

Sarah,

Did you print with "Finest detail" checked in the print dialog?
In my tests it only prints @ 720 when finest detail is checked, otherwise it
downsamples to 360, presumably to keep the processing time and spool size
down.

Mike


On 16/07/07, Sarah Thompson <sarah@...> wrote:
>
>   Firstly, thanks to the people who responded about my lack-of-neutral
> tone problem with my r2400 ABW prints -- it did turn out to be a flaky
> light magenta cartridge. Swapping it out helped a fair bit, but wasn't
> perfect. Then, I moved house, which involved packing everything up,
> putting it in a truck and driving about 40 miles. On trying again, the
> prints were perfectly neutral, so I therefore recommend moving house as
> often as possible as a means of maintaining consistent print quality. ;-)
>
> Actually, what I really wanted to write about is some experiments I've
> done recently. I read a few articles online about problems with the
> default interpolation algorithms used by both Photoshop and the Epson
> drivers when rescaling images to the driver's internal 720ppi
> resolution. I was thinking about doing some experiments with various
> interpolation algorithms, then it occured to me, why not just print the
> actual *image* at 720dpi? This means that no interpolation will occur
> other than that which is purely part of the driver's dithering
> algorithm. I realise that for many people this would result in prints
> that are too small, but I am lucky enough that my two cameras have
> 4000x4000 and 8000x6000 resolution (a Megavision E4 monochrome
> medium-format back and a Better Light large format scan back
> respectively). Anyway, I tried it with a few images and was blown away
> with the results -- the prints (made with the Epson driver in ABW mode,
> Photo RPM, Epson Premium Glossy) are astonishingly sharp, if anything
> more so than a large-format contact print (hence the title of the post),
> with a level of three-dimensionality that I've never really seen before.
> A (medium-format) photo taken a few months ago in Yosemite Valley from a
> bridge over one of the streams shows incredibly fine detail in the
> foliage. I also printed a couple of Better Light images shot in the
> Mojave desert in Joshua Tree National Monument (roughly letter-size)
> where every grain in the sandstone of a large boulder was clearly visible.
>
> I think these days there is a real push toward ever-larger prints, but
> some of the best images I've ever seen were actually really quite small
> by modern standards (I'm thinking here of some original prints by Edward
> Weston, who was very much into the contact printing approach).
>
> Anyway, just thinking out loud, and wondering if anyone else had tried
> the same approach.
>
> [s]
> 
>


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