Digital BW, The Print

> From: glemasurier
> 
> Thanks, Paul. I haven't tried RAW because of computing power 
> and storage space, and the 
> extra hassle of converting them to TIFFs or the PSD files 
> that I usually use.

At 25 cents a gigabyte, that's no excuse. ;-) Don't know what software you
use, but Photoshop can open raw files directly. You'll get much better
results.

> Perhaps the 
> better question then is to ask if converting to 16-bit for 
> editing actually does me any good?

Probably not. I never bother if I start with a JPEG. It certainly doesn't
hurt, though.

> On image size, do you mean setting the finished print size 
> and letting resolution fall where 
> it may? That's what I have been doing, and have had fairly 
> good results up to 12 x 18 on a 2400.

Yes. But once in a while, you can get into trouble with moire if the image
contains any fine pattern detail, because the default for the Epson driver
is just to resize using what Photoshop calls "nearest neighbor"
interpolation, which is really no interpolation at all. Current Epson
drivers have an "edge smoothing" option, which I believe tells it to do some
real interpolation, but if you get into trouble with moire the best thing to
do is explicitly resize to the next higher number that's an integral
subdivision of 720ppi (720, 360, 240, 180, etc.). That way, you'll get a
chance to see if there's any moire before you print. In Photoshop, you have
several filtering options when you resize, so you can choose one according
to how much moire results. But this is only for the rare image that has fine
patterns in it.

-- 

Ciao,               Paul D. DeRocco
Paul                mailto:pderocco@...