Digital BW, The Print

Jeff: <I'm looking though a book I just purchased ("Sharp" by Nigel Parry) 
and I was thinking how amazing the B&W pictures look. So I was wondering what 
type of printing do high quality book makers use to make their books and why 
hasn't that technology trickled down to an Epson printer price range (5k to 
$700  depending on size). The pictures in the books look better than any B&W 
darkroom print I've ever done.>

A couple of additions to what Stephen said...

High-quality offset printing, especially of B&W, is typically done with 
duotones, tritones, quadtones, etc. IOW, two, three, four + plates are used 
to produce the rich, halftoned images. This -- in combination with high line 
screens like 200-300 lpi -- can produce beautifully printing pages.

Keep in mind that offset litho has very little to do with inkjet printing. 
It's not a question of "technology trickling down." They're completely 
different animals on their own lateral tech tracks.

I discuss some of this in my book. Speaking of which... for anyone i
nterested, I've recently posted an Errata page for the book at:
http://www.dpandi.com/resources/bookstore/mdp/errata.html

This should resolve the most obvious errors that recent book purchasers may 
have noticed. I've also expanded this page to include important updates and a 
couple of PDF improvements to the artwork, as well. 

If you catch any additional errors, I'd appreciate your e-mailing me OFFLIST. 
Most other updates will be covered in future revisions to the book. Thanks!

Harald Johnson
author, "Mastering Digital Printing"
DP&I.com ( http://www.dpandi.com )