From B&W film to digital printing

[lungovw]

Hello,

I shoot in B&W film and normally print in fiber paper (traditional darkroom)
I also use sometimes a Epson 4870 scanner and a HP printer with 6 colors cartridges.
But in this digital part I have several doubts... 4 of them are crucial.

What would you recommend?
Scanning in JPG, TIF, other?
Which gamma?
Scanning in grayscale or color?
Should I convert to anything different before printing?

Case that is too much for a thread I would also appreciate some reference texts or web sites. I tried manuals but they list all that is possible while I need something more directive.

Thanks for any help.

Rgds


Wagner Lungov

[venchka]

My choices:

TIFF
Adjust gamma to suit negative and my mood.
16 bit greyscale to keep the file size down. Sometimes I scan B&W negatives as 48 bit transparencies and invert in the scanning software.
I print TIFF files from Adobe Lightroom. It handles everything.

Hope that helped.

[m332720]

TIFF
Gama 2.2
48 bit RGB files are close to 400 mb but if I am going to take the time to scan I want to get all of the information I can out of the negative
I send 16 bit PSD files to my printer from Photoshop CS3

[Joseph O'Neil]

TIFF

Don't know about greyscale vs colour - depnds on what you need. For small work, I find scanning in greyscale works fine, but for large reprints, even if the image is all black & white, use colour scanning. Huge files, but in greyscale - at least I think so - you seem to loose detail, information, at the very least, you loose the "emotional" effect of using warm tone VS cold tone paper.

As for gamma, no idea. test and experiment. After many years I personally still find callibtating your monitor to your printer for proper output a complete PITA. Others do nnot have that same issue, but even if it takes you a day (or two) of testing to get it right, do it.

good luck
joe

[Tyler Boley]

These questions imply broader issues to look at and have a lot of "it depends" answers. I'd recommend Amadou's book-
http://www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com/
and any of the Real World Photoshop series.
Tyler

[lungovw]

Thank you all for your feed back.
Now I have an idea as starting point and will also order the book for further improvements. Cool!!

Best regards,

WL

[Bruce Watson]

These questions imply broader issues to look at and have a lot of "it depends" answers. I'd recommend Amadou's book http://www.masteringdigitalbwbook.com/ and any of the Real World Photoshop series.
Tyler

What Tyler said. Amadou's book gives the direction that you seem to want. Very good book, highly recommended.

[nathanm]

I print TIFF files from Adobe Lightroom. It handles everything.

Except image dimensions in excess of 10,000 pixels.

lungovw, scan your images no larger than the size you plan on printing them at. Excessive data just serves to bog down your machine and your creativity in my experience. 16-bit grayscales are a pain enough, but a 48-bit color scan would just be untenable in my view. I guess if you plan on running a simple curves adjustment and be done it would be okay, but once you start adding layers you might as well get used to seeing spinning beachballs\hourglasses and creeping progress bars.

[venchka]

Except image dimensions in excess of 10,000 pixels.

Aye. There's the rub. When scanning 4x5 negatives on an Epson 4990 I limit the scan to 1,800 spi.

[venchka]

...

lungovw, scan your images no larger than the size you plan on printing them at.

Can someone explain this in "Scanning for Dummies-That would be me" terms?