Digital BW, The Print

On Jan 5, 2008, at 10:10 AM, Frank Jay wrote:

> Can you explain the above please Shoshanna. I was under the  
> impression that RAW files can't be printed as a RAW file, but must  
> be translated to another type of file. I admit I have tons of holes  
> in my digital and PS knowledge and I must have heard or read this  
> and believed it.  Ques is.............. How does one enlarge  
> directly from a RAW file?....OR, am I confusing, enlarging with  
> printing.

JPEG files can have what are referred to as artifacts. These may be  
from for example, in camera sharpening or data compression. Also  
remember that JPEG are 8 bit images which would be able to contain  
256 (2^8) different tonalities. On the other hand, RAW can be  
processed at 16 bit which would be 65,536 (2^16) tonalities. If you  
have ever worked on an image in Photoshop and saw gaps in your  
histogram appear, that happens because adjustments in the image have  
been too extreme for the amount of data (tonalities) in the image. If  
those gaps become significant enough you may start to see  
posterization (unnatural tonalities) in the image. That situation  
happens much easier in 8 bit images with 256 than 65,536 tonalities.

In my workflow, I process the RAW image in Adobe Camera RAW, open it  
directly into Photoshop, do my image manipulations, save the  
Photoshop file as a master file and when I want to print it, I save a  
flattened _copy_ of the master file for that purpose.

As far as enlarging, that is controlled either by specifying an  
output size in your RAW processing software of choice or in Photoshop  
with the Image Size dialog. You have to specify the dimensions and  
how many pixels per inch (PPI) you want the resulting image to be.

Jim