At 09:48 PM 3/1/2003 -0800, you wrote:
At 09:45 AM 3/1/2003 -0600, Joel Wilcox wrote:
John,
The primary disadvantage is the time it takes and the inconvenience of
developing film and scanning it as compared to an unmediated digital
source. That said, I've been doing what you describe for about 6 years
now. I like the idea that I can either scan or wet print my winners. I
really like film. When people tell me they are surprised I don't have a
digital camera, I don't disparage digital cameras, I just tell them I
really like film. It's much easier for me to say nice things about films
than think of reasons against digital (especially as I really have
nothing against digital in principle).
BTW I am very happy printing BW with color inks. I print a lot more
color than BW, so I would probably settle for some compromises anyway,
but honestly I don't feel compromised in any way. One thing that I know
that helps is Colorvision's profiling software. When I build a profile,
one of my tests as to whether I've gotten the profile right is the
ability to print a neutral grayscale image in RGB mode.
Joel, can you tell me more? I am just starting to play around with B&W
conversion. How do you print B&W? What kind of neutral gray image do you
use? What printer? etc.
Richard,
Okeydoke: here's my stuff: Epson 1160 printer using Xtreme Gamut CMYK
inks in a continuous inking system. These are dye inks based on Ilford
Archiva. I don't know if they are still available (I bought quite a lot of
them on sale a couple years ago).
Photoshop 5.5. (My profiling software is a PS plug-in.)
Profiles for individual paper types are made using Colorvision profiling
software. See http://www.colorvision.com . These profiles begin with your
printing a target, scanning it on a flatbed, and then letting the software
build the profile. (It's not perfect, as your individual scanner is a
variable whose idiosyncrasies you must overcome. I've read a lot of
complaints about this. All I can say is that while it isn't perfect, the
problems can be overcome. For example, with each new profile I usually
need to make small color balance corrections to reduce green.)
While I have occasionally converted a color source image to grayscale, I
usually keep color source images in color and shoot BW if that's what I
want. They remain pretty much divided and distinguished worlds for me.
When making profiles, I always print a grayscale source image (I have to
convert it to RGB mode for the print run, but this does nothing to change
the tonality of the source file). I compare the output to a fine print of
this image and tweak the profile accordingly. Not only does this create
the usable BW profile for me, but it also generates the best starting-point
for color printing. In fact, I don't really understand how people can
evaluate profiles while strictly looking at color only. It's too hard for
me and I don't get it right. Getting close to the neutrality of good BW in
RGB mode seems to make sense for getting both color and BW profiles right.
These profiles do not produce "special effects" grayscale prints. They get
you close to standard, just out of the darkroom for journalism class BW
prints. You can then use Photoshop to change the effect of the final
print. I just want something initially that looks like a test print of the
negative on a #2 paper without standard filtering and printed for minimum
exposure black. Some people want a special look and will dedicate a
printer to achieve it. Sometimes you have to read between the lines of a
workflow to determine whether the person is really on a quest for a
particular effect. I'm trying to steer betwixt all such concerns as the
whole business of profiling and color management is very difficult and
perplexing, especially if one does not establish as many constants as possible.
Note: Epson printers have changed quite a bit since I got set up with the
1160. With chipped carts they have made it harder (but not impossible) to
use continuous inking devices and to experiment with a variety of
third-party inks. Secondly, the quality of Epson ink and its constantly
improving printers and papers have made it easier and probably more
desirable to stay entirely within the Epson world (which is of course what
Epson has in mind). If I were starting up right now, I would probably work
with Epson materials and see if I could adapt the methodology above to
produce a neutral grayscale by tweaking sliders in the printer dialogue
rather than rushing out to buy profiling software, at least until I had
determined that I will not get what I want that way.
Monitor calibration of some sort seems to me to be essential either way,
but that's another story.
Joel W.
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