Digital BW, The Print

Perhaps some of you can help with a PS problem that I've been 
trying to solve.

I prefer to regularly feather corners/edges on practically all of my 
photos. I've been selecting with either a rectangular or oval 
selection, inverse, apply a 250 feather and repeat with another 
100-150 feather and finally a curves adjustment layer. 

This works fine most of the time but whenever I have open, 
evenly illuminated areas, i.e. blank sky, calm water, I get a slight 
to horrendous posterization. It's very subtle on the monitor but 
evident on the output. I've tried combining two different selections 
to acheive a blended feather but that's not competely effective 
either. I've tried a burn/dodge layer mask/soft light/50% but the 
999 pixel diameter brush just isn't big enough resulting in 
uneven burns. 

I'm scanning at 16 bit then to 8 bit and 70-90MB files.

Any other ideas??

Thanks - R Murai

I have experienced the same thing - at first I thought it was my Epson 2000P printer .... Try Jonathan Sach's Picture Windows Pro. It supports BW in 16 bit and Color in 48 bit for all functions. The gradients DO work quite nicely.

http://www.dl-c.com

Best,
Alex

... but whenever I have open, 

> evenly illuminated areas, i.e. blank sky, calm water, I get a slight 
> to horrendous posterization. It's very subtle on the monitor but 
> evident on the output.

I often do the same thing, but use levels rather than curves.  I sometimes
also make the selection, save it as a layer, and check multiply.  Further
adjust using Opacity.

STEPHEN    JENNINGS
    P h o t o g r a p h e r
       Cambridge, MA
sgjennin@...
www.stephenjennings.com

> Perhaps some of you can help with a PS problem that I've been
> trying to solve.
> 
> I prefer to regularly feather corners/edges on practically all of my
> photos. I've been selecting with either a rectangular or oval
> selection, inverse, apply a 250 feather and repeat with another
> 100-150 feather and finally a curves adjustment layer.
> 
> This works fine most of the time but whenever I have open,
> evenly illuminated areas, i.e. blank sky, calm water, I get a slight
> to horrendous posterization. It's very subtle on the monitor but
> evident on the output. I've tried combining two different selections
> to acheive a blended feather but that's not competely effective
> either. I've tried a burn/dodge layer mask/soft light/50% but the
> 999 pixel diameter brush just isn't big enough resulting in
> uneven burns. 
> 
> I'm scanning at 16 bit then to 8 bit and 70-90MB files.
> 
> Any other ideas??
> 
> Thanks - R Murai