Digital BW, The Print

Hi Paul -
I'm glad to see that your bottom line is where it ought to be :-)))
The back and forth discussions were becoming confusing enough to
make one wonder what the real point was, which is why I wrote.

One question though --since you're saving your edited images as  
quality 12  jpg's,
what would you do if, for example, you had a saved final image which  
you printed
out at 16 x 20, and later you decided to print it as a 30 x 40?  As I  
see it, you'd have
two choices - 1) interpolate upward your 8 bit jpg, which not only  
will be problematic
by uprezing a compressed format image (even at 12, it's compressed)  
and the additional
potential problem with lossy formats, of additional data loss each  
time you make changes.
Or - 2) going back to the RAW or DNG (saved variations in (I think  
you meant?-- .XMP sidecar
files) and basically, starting all over again.

Why not simply save as tiff or psd  16 bit files, which will cause  
far fewer problems, even
though the file size is larger, and save you a lot of time?

Unless storage is a real problem, my own method is still another  
alternative, and that's
to retouch and optimize most of my image finals at an even larger  
size than I think I'll ever
want to print them. In that way, downsizing for any print size will  
basically minimize any
retouching that possibly could show at 100%. It's a little more  
necessary for me to do that,
since much of my work consists of photo collages, and sometimes  
master images
(with all the layers) can be upwards of two gigabytes.  I've had to  
get external storage up into the
terabytes range, and it's expensive, but seems to be the best  
solution for me.

Best,

Clay

Clayton Price Photographer
  www.cpricephoto.com
  clay@...
  212 929-7721	

Paul D. DeRocco wrote:
<<<I agree, and I most certainly _wouldn't_ print without editing,  
not to
mention saving the edited version. In fact, I usually do lots of  
edits, way
beyond what you could ever do in any raw converter, then save my final
version as a quality 12 JPEG, since there's no need for more than  
eight bits
of resolution once you're ready to print. Indeed, printer drivers  
generally
only accept eight-bit data anyway, so obviously one would use curves and
other tools to extract the optimum range out of the larger raw data  
values.
Raw files are just that, "raw material".>>>




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