Digi-vs-analog color prints: Can you quantify the difference?

[Leonard Metcalf]

I have been printing Type C prints for years, and have done a number of Ilfochromes with masks etc. I started using an Epson 7600 a couple of years ago and haven't looked back. I print on matt cotton rag papers, and get very different results from the glossy prints I was used to. It took a while to work it all out, but frankly I believe it was worth it. I love the prints I can produce with the printer, and I don't have the headaches from all the chemicals. But yes they do look different. Perhaps it is like comparing a silver gelatin print with a platinum. Photographs I gave up on trying to print in the dark room are now shinning from the inkjet. I particularly love the control the computer gives.

[Ron Marshall]

At present I don't have room for a darkroom, so until recently what I have been doing is scanning my negs and gradually improving my Photoshop skills in preparation for the eventual purchase of a printer. However the B/W inkjet samples that I have seen at the local Epson dealer I can only describe as unerwhelming. I love the look of a selenium toned fiber based print. I didn't expect an inkjet to mimic that look, nor did I especially want that. Why reinvent the wheel. However, my main impetus for entering the digital world is the ease and control of Photoshop, that is, once PS has been mastered. I'm not quite there yet, but I can get the look I want in print much faster than I ever could in the darkroom.

A couple of weeks ago I finally took the plunge. I decided to experiment with digital printing as cheaply as possible; that way if I couldn't get the look I wanted I could dump the printer for a small loss and then set-up a darkroom.

I opted for a refurbished Epson 2200, only $450 including shipping. But, the 2200 can't produce good prints, in my opinion, by itself; it needs two key additions to do so. The first is a good RIP. I decided to do this on the cheap as well, I downloaded Roy Harrington's Quadtone RIP for $50. The second is a set of Piezography NK7 neutral B/W ink cartridges from Jon Cone's Inkjetmall. This inkset consists of seven serial dilutions of a neutral black ink. Warm or cool tones depend on the tone of the paper used. This ink is pure carbon based set that is archival for over 200 years. It can only be used on matt media. Hence there is no gloss differential, bronzing, or metamerism. It comes in seven individual cartridges, but I intend to install a CIS, continuous inking system, to dramatically lower ink costs, once my first set of ink cartridges are nearly exhausted.

I had read about Piezograpy many times, but three things made me hesitant to try it: Third party inks void the Epson warranty (Doesn't bother me much with a $450 printer); the possibility that Piezography ink would increase the incidence of nozzle blockages (From my limited experience and from my research no more than with Epson inks); most importantly though the fear that I just wouldn't be happy with the look of a matt print.

Well, much to my surprise I love the look of Piezography prints. A good friend and fellow LF shooter, and a very accomplished traditional printer, was there for the first prints and we were both stunned by the result. Using the paper profile supplied with the RIP (My monitor has been profiled) the first print was a perfect match for what was on the screen. I had prepared myself for a long and painful learning curve, so I was pleasantly surprised. My friend, who has taken a couple of workshops with John Sexton, intends to purchase the same set-up. He will not abandon his darkroom, he likes the look of traditional prints. But as he is also a Photoshop expert he remarked that to get the look he wants with PS and Piezography is much easier and quicker.

As I mentioned I love the look of a glossy fiber based silver print, also the look of platinum prints. I am equally pleased with the look of Piezography prints. They will not replace traditional prints for me. I may still make silver prints from some of my negs, or try platinum or other alternatives, but if Piezography becomes my sole printing method I will be perfectly content.

Sorry for hijacking the thread, since your post is about color inkjet printing. But in case you sometimes do B/W I thought I would mention this set-up as another option. $500 may not be prohibitive for a dedicated B/W.

[Bruce Watson]

...can someone tell me what difference(s) to expect when I switch to do-it-myself scanning (ie, 4990 or 750- not drum or Imacon) --still from color neg-- and Epson 7800 printing to 20x24. ...when you literally put the prints side-by-side, what differences are there?

You are talking about a 5x enlargement. This is about the limit of what you can do with a consumer flatbed and have it look good. Not excellent, not professional, but good. At this level the improvement in a professional flat bed or Imacon scan is evident. A drum scan even more so.

As to print differences, it depends of course on your skill levels, both darkroom and Photoshop. Assuming equal competence in both, I think you'll find the following to be more or less true.

The digital version will be flat and sharp corner to corner, something that becomes more difficult to achieve in the darkroom at higher enlargement levels because of optical alignment issues. Detail will be more veiled in the digital print due to the consumer flatbed being a bit beyond it's capacity to capture detail and tonal separations. If you use a drum scanned image, sharpness, detail, and tonal separations will likely be better than the darkroom print because of the increased optical capabilities of the drum scanner. The digital print may well have better gamut (subject dependent). The darkroom print may well have better Dmax. The darkroom print will be plastic (IIRC, all RA-4 print materials are RC). The inkjet print can be fiber if you choose. You can print inkjet now on either matte or glossy papers and anything in between, and you have many more choices as to texture and color for the paper you use.

Bottom line - they aren't the same. Inkjet prints are not wanna be darkroom prints. They are their own separate media. If you accept that, fine. If you try to bend them back on themselves to make them into darkroom look-alikes, you are doomed to fail.

If you really want to do this, you should recognize that you have a fair amount of learning curve in front of you. Most of what you know about darkroom printing won't translate. You have to learn how to scan. You have to learn how to use a photo editor. You have to learn how to use the printer. If you want the best quality prints, there are no "push button" solutions. Digital is actually more work than darkroom printing, mainly because you have so much more control and capability.

And it all starts with a good scan. The saying still holds: Garbage in, garbage out.

All that said, it's eminently doable. I haven't made a darkroom print in I don't know how long. I do my own drum scanning of my own 5x4 negatives (Tri-X and 160PortraVC). I print using both UltraChrome inks and Piezotones (B&W) on Epson printers. I find the results outstanding. Better than I could do in the darkroom. I don't have any doubts that this is the path to my best prints.

I suggest to find out if this is what you want, send one of your negatives out for a drum scan and print on an inkjet printer. Take the same negative into the darkroom and make your best darkroom print. Pin them up on a wall under the same lighting and have a look. It is after all your choice - not ours.

[Helen Bach]

Bruce's reply looks spot on. I might add to "The darkroom print may well have better Dmax" with "...or the inkjet may have better D-max and density range, as well as more potential for precise control of shadow detail - ie you can actually work right to D-max without losing detail in the toe."

I'm measuring a D-max of almost 2.7 with current paper/pigmented ink combinations. How useful that is is another matter. I also find that it is a lot easier to use the full dynamic range of colour negative film when doing digital post. The non-parallel nature of the curves near the shoulder is not a problem. The predicted life of pigmented inkjet colour prints exceeds the predicted life of any chromogenic paper. But they are only predictions.

As far as B&W goes, I use K3 and diluted R800 inks in a 2200 with IJC/OPM and prefer that to the Cone K7 option, especially for papers other than matte. If you are willing to dedicate a printer to B&W, and to do some tweaking, you will probably be able to produce prints that have a depth and tonality that is difficult to match with any other process.

Oh, and I don't know of a darkroom equivalent of LAB colour correction, despite the name.

Best,
Helen

[Bruce Watson]

Yes. I knew I was leaving something out (it's a weekend - that's my excuse anyway ;-)

The digital print may well have both better shadow detail and better highlight detail in the same print (often difficult to accomplish in the darkroom). The digital print doesn't have a toe or shoulder unless you create one in Photoshop. The digital print won't show any reciprocity failures either - I used to get those with the old Cibrachrome process (areas burned in went yellow, areas dodged went cyan, or the other way around - it's been awhile).

And you can do neat things that are nearly impossible in the darkroom, like burning in just the shadows (makes cracks in rocks more dramatic, or brings up textures without changing fundamental tonality).

IOW, you have more control to make a print that is a better match to your artistic vision, with digital printing. Color and B&W.

[Ken Allen]

Back to the topic of scanning a color neg.
The old Kodak PhotoCD scanners did a great job converting negs to a good color balanced image, even if the scans were limited by the CCD's of the day. Since Kodak (or the others) do not provide their proprietary film terms or imaging technology to other companies, few scanners do well at automatically converting negatives to a positive image.

I am experienced at color correcting so I do all of the transformations manually. I get much better quality this way, but you it will not work for everyone.

First, I make a raw scan of the negative as a positive. You can adjust the global white and black point to eliminate some of the dataless area, but you do not gain anything by doing that in the scanner verses in Photoshop. When you set the scanner to 16bit per/channel and positive scan, that's all the scanner can give you (not addressing multiscanning). I also scan at the best (debatable) resolution possible. Some scanners like the 4990 I have not seen and improvement from 4800ppi Vs. 2400 ppi on a 4x5. On the Imacon the highest natural resolution is definately gives you more information than a lower resolution setting on that scanner. I scan for the purpose of archiving, so I always go high res, but if your goals are different you may want to scan just at the resolution you need for the applicaiton.

I then open the image in Photoshop for the remainder of the work:

The second step, is to Invert the image, this is a linear transform and is easily reversed... just in case you want to see what the original negative looked like. I actually do this some times to show various degradions on historic negatives.

The third step is to make a new curves (or levels) layer adjustment correcting for the overall contrast... coarsely. I may use the black eyedropper to set the base to black, somtimes I will find an area in the image... it's a matter of judgment. I hardly ever use the white eye dropper to set the white point, I usaully make this adjustment manually and gloablly to all channels.

For the fourth step I often downsample and save a "sized" version at this point, sinced I scanned at a higher than currently needed resoultion. This makes the editing go faster and many of the edits I'm going to make can be reverse applied to the master file when I'm done.

Step number five! Since this is a copy file now, I'm a lot looser about making permanent changes, so I merge the first curves layer that had my global contrast correction.

Step six, create a new curves adjustment layer for fine tuning. I do look for reference areas (skin tones, neutrals, skies) to watch the numbers and make sure I'm on track, but otherwise I adjust visually (calibrated monitor) to get a pleasing color corrected image. I may try this several times creating different versions of color correction. Each time I make a new adjustment layer, title the layer, and I end up with several layer adjustments that I can click on and off to see which one I like best.

Optional step: make a scan using the best negative setting on the scanner and compare to your correction. Yours should be better, mine (usually) are.

Note: there are lots/too many tips and tricks to get this right depending on the image. Give it a try.

I know there is another positing somewhere that provides a similar process with illustrations and everything. Con't find the link right now.

[Al Seyle]

Thank you everyone for your generous informative replies. Looks like I will be changing plans and probably go with having some drum scans made. It's just hard to find labs that will and are good at scanning from color neg.

[julian]

Thank you everyone for your generous informative replies. Looks like I will be changing plans and probably go with having some drum scans made. It's just hard to find labs that will and are good at scanning from color neg.

this guy http://www.precision-drum-scanning.co.uk/

does Cookes 8x10 colour neg scans.

[Jeffrey Sipress]

Good info from Bruce and others. Drum scans are required if anyone is to try this comparison. What has not received enough mention here is that once a good scan is acheived, the control you have over your image by using computer image editing software is so far beyond what you can do in a darkroom, that even if you are a loupe-using inkjetdot hunter, the image itself will just be so much better if edited to ones own desires. To me, that's what makes the new processes worth it.