To be blunt, those who are fully engaged with digital negatives for alternative processes as a main form of creative output have, in large majority, come to the same opinion as Don. I'm in that camp and have been many years, way back to 1996, making digital negatives for contact printing.
I'm generally a lazy person, but when I want to have the highest quality for the effort, I pay attention to those pioneers who've blazed them trails before me... that group is Burkholder, Nelson (and I'll add) Keith Schrieber.
Here are a few relevant links... there are so many more, but it's Saturday and I'm editing
D. Burkholder (often better than late night TV)
http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/right_frame_pages/turtorial-right-frame.html
http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/three_frame_main_pages/pictorial_three_frames1.htm
M. Nelson
http://www.precisiondigitalnegatives.com/
http://www.markinelsonphoto.com/gallery.php
K. Schrieber
http://www.zianet.com/jkschreiber/articles/1280PyroDigiNegs.html
http://www.zianet.com/jkschreiber/galleries.html
-Darryl B.
Message: 1 Date: Fri, 3 Feb 2006 10:38:29 -0800 From: "Gary Reese" Subject: RE: Re: Digital Negatives << Making digital negatives with black ink really doesn't yield the best results. >> Considering that photographic papers are orthochromatic, it makes little sense to create a digital negative with a matrix of colored dots. This seems to be something not typically addressed. Gary Reese ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:20:57 -0000 From: "koloshor" Subject: Re: Digital Negatives --- In QuadtoneRIP@yahoogroups.com, "Gary Reese" wrote:<< Making digital negatives with black ink really doesn't yield thebestresults. >> Considering that photographic papers are orthochromatic, it makeslittle sense to create a digital negative with a matrix of colored dots. This seems to be something not typically addressed. That's an understatement. Multigrade papers have one sensiometric curve for green exposure, another for blue. Neutral B&W inks are the only way to tame that mess. And when you throw UV processes like platinum into the mix, things get even worse for colored inks. Although it is possible to run a QTR cal on a UV densitometer and build curves that use all the colors in their "effective" UV densities. B&W inks make life a lot easier. What really makes a nice negative is something QTR isn't strong at: laying down a pretty dense pattern of low dilution inks, and using minimal overlap. I've just been amazed that QTR can drive negative densities up to insane levels (dmax approaching 3). ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 7 Date: Sat, 04 Feb 2006 03:32:44 -0000 From: "donbga" Subject: Re: Digital NegativesConsidering that photographic papers are orthochromatic, it makeslittle sense to create a digital negative with a matrix of colored dots. This seems to be something not typically addressed. That's an understatement. Multigrade papers have one sensiometric curve for green exposure, another for blue. Neutral B&W inks are the only way to tame that mess. And when you throw UV processes like platinum into the mix, things get even worse for colored inks. Although it is possible to run a QTR cal on a UV densitometer and build curves that use all the colors in their "effective" UV densities. B&W inks make life a lot easier.You guys are totally way off base with these comments! Colorized negative produce optimum results. That's been demonstrated both by Mark Nelson and Dan Burkholder. My negatives for printing AZO are turquoise green (made on an Epson 2200) and work great. Negatives made on a 1280 are Red colored. Using colorized negatives for alt. processes is the cats meow. For an example check this link out. http://www.zianet.com/jkschreiber/articles/1280PyroDigiNegs.html Keith Schreiber uses a modified method as developed by Dan Burkholder. Don Bryant