Digital BW, The Print

Morning everybody

I just wanted to thank all those of you on this particular forum, which is so important to B&W Printing, for looking at the new B&W Printing book and PercepTool. There has been much discussion in other places and I'd like to respond here about some of the questions you may have.

1. What does PercepTool do?
The camera image and the image on the human retina of the eye see a luminance image that lacks depth. The visual cortex of the brain takes that luminance image and processes it so that the edges and contrast are optimized for a 3D image. PercepTool mimics that process. The great masters of painting and photography were able to do this because of great practice, expertise, and genius. It can also be accomplished in Photoshop with much effort, skill, experience and…genius. Why do you think that there are so few masters?

2. Why wasn't PercepTool included with the book, B&W Printing?
The answer is simple - the publisher would not publish a CD with the book, so I had no choice and had to market it separately. The price has been reviewed as just right, too much, and not enough. The typo that shows the PercepTool price as 19.95 in the book as compared with 89.95 on the website is a pure and simple copy editor error that no one caught. It will be changed in subsequent editions of the book. If you think you were upset when you saw it, you should have seen me!

3.  Why was the workflow in done Lightroom and Photoshop?
I explain, thoroughly, that the workflow in the book is a guide and make a point of it. I use both Photoshop and Lightroom in my workflow, but anyone with the least bit of expertise could work out a workflow for Photoshop and Camera Raw alone, Aperture and Photoshop, NIkon Capture NX, or any other photoprocessing software. I even have a chapter on how to think about making a workflow. The workflow I suggest is simple, which is the way most real masters work. None of the ones I've known and worked with were complicated. I've even included workflow examples at the end of each chapter to show other masters who work entirely different from me to show that greatness in workflow is the power of end masterpiece, be it simple or complex.  If you don't like my workflow, don't complain about it, just make your own, for crying out loud.

4.  PercepTool availability.
Perceptool is now available for both Windows XP and Vista and Macintosh Intel. For those of you who have Photoshop Standard, the script works in 8 and 16 bits per channel and in Photoshop Extended in 32, 16, and 8 bits per channel. The main reason for this discrepancy is that layers are not totally supported in Standard in 32 bits per channel, required by the scripts. The noUI Filter plugin works always at 100% and works in 32 bits per channel on all versions. The is no 64 bit version for Vista 64. The speed in version 1.5.5 is around 8x faster than the original. We had a breakthrough just after the software was introduced and is the reason for the quick availability. In addition, I should point out that the interface sliders in the script UI show "real-time" image adjustment, not a proxy in a window like so many other Photoshop plugins. I believe this is a first for this. We will continue to work

5.  Installation.
Actually, the largest problem we've had is installation. Most of the emails I get are about how to install PercepTool. Short of making an installer, we have made it as simple as we can, and the instructions are clear. Eventually we do plan to add an installer, but the initial cost was expensive. Please, please, please, read the installation instructions and follow them precisely. We've had people, for instance, that only installed the 3 plugin because they thought it was for PS3. You need to install both 3 and 4 plugins.

6. Ad hominum attacks.
I do not respond at all to ad hominum attacks or questions from anyone. Neither did Benjamin Franklin.

7.  The reason for the book.
The book was written to revive the idea of photographic masterpiece and how to create one in the simplest way possible. Most people have missed this point. Many want to talk about LIghtroom and Photoshop and Tips and Tricks, but the book is NOT about those things. It's about masterpiece and how to think about making one and how great painters and photographers think and work it through. Most people who look for the latest trick are what I call "lick players." In Bluegrass Music there are people who play songs and people who play licks connected together on the banjo. People who play songs use licks, but they have a sense of the whole as well. Lick players have no sense of the whole. A masterpiece demands that you have a feeling and technical expertise for the whole. If you haven't seen the whole, you're a lick player.

8. Printing.
Some have complained about my lack of coverage of printers and color management. Printing and color management are, in reality, a simple matter. All you need for B&W printing is a high quality monitor that is calibrated, printer environment (printer,ink, paper) profiles that are very accurate and linearized in the L channel, and, of course, a high quality printer and paper. The most important aspect of printing and photography is the "Artist's Eye." The Artist's Eye is what my book B&W Printing and PercepTool are all about.

My regards and many thanks to you all.

George DeWolfe