Digital BW, The Print

Hello Danny,

>ARE YOU USING... (or have you evaluated) 
>any of the following (or other) PLUGINS/SCRIPTS?:
>* B/W Styler - www.thepluginsite.com
>* BW Workflow Pro - www.FredMiranda.com 
>* Black and White Studio - www.powerretouche.com
>* Silver Efex Pro - www.niksoftware.com
> 
>If so I'd be interested in your opinions, experiences, features you 
>like, comparison commentary, etc. 

Over a period of several years I tried the demos of several of these
products, plus paid for a few and used them for awhile.  But I always
eventually drifted back to doing it myself in Photoshop.  It's been
too long now so I can't comment specifically on any product, but in
general I found them either too restrictive, or had more options than
I would ever use, or cost more than I was willing to pay, or required
that the file be in RGB.  Since I'm not interested in toning (or any
other RGB-requiring special effects) I do everything in Grayscale
(because is reduces file size by 2/3 and speeds up all operations).  

Two things I discovered during that period:

1) What looks great for one image may not work for another.  Therefore
 having even a large number of canned solutions did not work for me. 
I needed some approach that had some independent but interacting
variables over which I had complete control.

2)I could easily obsess over the minutest differences and spend huge
amounts of time and either remaining undecided or arriving at
something that I ended up not liking very well.  Since then I've
evolved into a standardized set of PS procedures which provides a wide
range of "looks" yet still allows me to drill down to a final decision
in 10 minutes or less.  I found that once I understood what the
controls did and got attuned to them I was able to bypass all the
mental clutter that kept leading me off into areas of indecision.

So it's do-myself-in-PS for me.  


Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm
I-Trak 2.1   http://www.cjcom.net/itrak.htm