Help needed with V750 scanning for B&W

[Geraldine Powell]

This forum is great! Now, thanks to everyone, I have a bunch of things to try out. I have an Epson 3880 and I am using Jon Cone piezography inks. I tend to favor the idea of doing as little in photoshop as possible but mainly, I want to develop a workflow that gets reasonable results and that I can tweak as I become more familiar with it. I agree with practice, practice, practice, but I wnt to try to do it intelligently.
G

[Ken Lee]

I have nothing against Photoshop or any other editor, but as someone from the era of large format darkroom prints, I try to maintain an analog feel as much as possible. Therefore I try to make as few adjustments as possible, as early in the process as possible. When making prints from digital capture, I recommend the same approach.

[tiggert]

This forum is great! Now, thanks to everyone, I have a bunch of things to try out. I have an Epson 3880 and I am using Jon Cone piezography inks. I tend to favor the idea of doing as little in photoshop as possible but mainly, I want to develop a workflow that gets reasonable results and that I can tweak as I become more familiar with it. I agree with practice, practice, practice, but I wnt to try to do it intelligently.
G

I undertook the exact same process last year using the 750, a 2880, piezo selenium. It is amazingly easy! My only piece of advice you may find with piezo it actually looks better when the digital "negative" on the screen is a little brighter than you would think it you do silver. To me piezo does an amazing job in the dark values, zone 1 actually prints details! Dont let the scanner chop the blacks and dont crush them in photoshop. Use the histogram on both and you will start pulling great prints in no time...

[tiggert]

I have nothing against Photoshop or any other editor, but as someone from the era of large format darkroom prints, I try to maintain an analog feel as much as possible. Therefore I try to make as few adjustments as possible, as early in the process as possible. When making prints from digital capture, I recommend the same approach.

+1 with Ken's approach. I only do minimal steps:

1) dust/scratch spot layer
2) dodge/burn layer
3) curve adjustments keeping an eye on the histogram, dont crush the blacks....

Basically it is a digital replication of my darkroom process....cool thing is once it is done, no need to repeat...just hit print!

Anything more is.....well i find not needed for what i want