I'm sticking with my advice about scanning a b&w neg as a film positive and using Photoshop to remove the color. In fact that is why I have been using less b&w film lately even when I see a scene as b&w final image. What's more I don't just let PS convert to gray scale. I want to decide how much of each channel ends up in my print. PS just uses a formula that may or may not fit my hopes and dreams for a particular image.
John Hennessy
Here in Delray beach at the Palm Beach Photographic Workshops the majority of our workshops being taught by the top digital professionals are scanning negatives in RGB mode. It has been demonstrated that when doing this, and scanning flat (white and black points pushed way out) more information is captured into the scan.
There are a number of ways to convert to grayscale. One is to just convert to grayscale and throw away the color info. This does not produce the nicest looking image. The second it to convert to lab, then throw away the lightness and alpha 2 channels. A third way is to use channel mixer, check monochrome and then adjust the RBG sliders to produce the best looking image.
Personally I scan all my film be it B&W, chrome or negative color in 32 bit RGB mode. Choose the highest RGB mode you have.
As for the comment about "inkjet" printers not producing good results....that is hogwash pure and simple. We are producing continuous tone grayscale images on Epson 1160, 1200, 3000, and 7000, and 9500 printers. The prints rival wet fiber based prints and are made on high quality fine art watercolor papers.
Good luck in your quest.
Mike
As for Mike Kravits comment about hogwash: you may be responding to my comment to an evident neophyte 'A typical inkjet printer printer out of the box does not do a very good job' of neutral image reproduction. I am sticking to that too.
There are ways to do it, my favorite being the Lightjet and some of Jon Cone's contributions, but it is definitly not going happen on its own. The original question was not printer specific, but if David Clark was thinking of Epson there too and he is thinking there is an Ansel Adams button on the printer, it seems only fair to point out that there ain't!
Be helpful and tell Mr Clark how to print neutral images.
John Hennessy
Everyone,
About a year ago I bought a Microtek 4 scanner to scan my 4x5 and 8x10 negs, and also because I wanted to try color but don't really want to pay the outlandish prices to get lf prints at the lab.
Recently I bought an Epson 1280 printer. My life has basically been a living hell trying to get these damn things to work. I go to the camera store, admire the work they have out as examples, go home, play around for a few hours, and end up with mushy crap with a bunch of lines through it. The printer seems to need a head cleaning every two days even if I don't use it at all. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, I just can't figure out what. Anyway, the point of this is, David, you and I seem from our other postings to have similar tastes and skills, and I'm warning you: this digital stuff is way more frustrating than making 8x10 contact prints in your closet, and the results are far worse! At least at first.
As for Photoshop LE, it seems pretty robust to me. I've spoken with a graphic designer we use at work and she says 95% of the time it has all she needs and she does pretty complicated stuff.
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