Black & White printing from scanned 4x5 negs

[Robb Reed]

One recent posting below asks about the computing power needed to scan & manipulate 4x5 negs. I found the responses to that query pretty informative and have a related question which doesn't seem to be addressed in the archives.

In large format, I use and wish to print from only black and white film. When I get set up I want to scan and work from my 4x5 negs. I have heard that printing color from digitized images is a more satisfying and (far) less problematic endeavor. Can anyone describe the difficulties involved in printing B&W from digital images and summarize what the current fixes are for those difficulties?

One friend I have who works in the ink development and production end of the business suggests that controlling the deepest blacks and whitest whites is the problem...but I know no more than that...

Thanks,

Robb Reed San Diego

[j.e.simmons]

Another potential problem is the tone of the black ink itself. I don't care for the regular Epson black - it has a greenish cast to me that makes me want to dunk the print in selenium toner. (No, you can't do that) Other inks may be more satisfactory, but I haven't tried them.

[Ken Lee]

Pure black, and pure shades of grey, are hard to create. When fine books are printed, printers often resort to 2 or more passes over the same image, using 2 or more distinct shades of grey ink. This is called duotone, tritone, quadtone, etc. Generally, the higher the number of inks, the better the quality. It allows them to use inks which look grey at all levels, instead of one ink alone, which may look too pink in the high values, too green in the low values, etc.



When printing on a good inkjet printer, one can follow the same approach, and replace the various color ink cartridges with a set of grey inks. The results can be outstanding, and can match or even exceed the quality of chemical prints. The disadvantage of this approach is that you will be using inksets that are not officially supported by the printer manufacturer. There is quite a lot of discussion on the B&W printing forums, where people complain about heads jamming, efforts to flush the old inks, replace the new ones, and vice versa. See DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint/" target="_blank) on Yahoo Groups. You also have to dedicate your printer to that inkset, since it's hard if not impossible to change back, once you load the new inks.



Another approach is to not try to get a perfect black and perfect gray. After all, many b&w papers are toned, and few if any papers are themselves perfectly neutral. You are then free to create your own color scheme, for each image if you like. Using Photoshop for example, you can create an infinite variety of warm and cold tone "looks". You can also mimic the quadtone process, and combine up to 4 print colors in complex ways.



This approach, which I follow, allows you to use one printer for color and quadtone printing: you don't have to buy a separate printer, just for use with a proprietary inkset. For an example of quadtones in Photoshop, see here (http://www.kenleegallery.com/bronze.htm" target="_blank).



Keep in mind that it is almost impossible to do any of this stuff unless your monitor is calibrated, and your paper+ink combination is profiled.

[Jay DeFehr]

Hi Ken. I don't know if this is of interest to you, but there is another way of working with digitized files to create B&W prints. It involves making an enlarged digital negative to be contact printed on photographic paper. Here's a link to all of the pertinent info:

http://www.danburkholder.com/Pages/main_pages/page1_main.htm

I hope this is useful to you, and wish you the best of luck in your pursuit.

[Herb Cunningham]

David Brooks has published several articles on this in Shutterbug, and George deWolfe has a lot of info, some free on his web site, as well in his Fine Art Digital printing cd, which is not free.

I use an Epson 2200 with Matte Black ink on matte paper with decent results, not up to AA's standards, but still working.

Most 'experts' suggest a dedicated b/w printer.

good luck

[Bruce Watson]

In large format, I use and wish to print from only black and white film. When I get set up I want to scan and work from my 4x5 negs. I have heard that printing color from digitized images is a more satisfying and (far) less problematic endeavor.

In my experience, this just isn't true. It is no harder, and in some ways easier, to make beautiful B&W prints from a scan. It is about equal to the effort to get a good color print. It does take more effort (for me) than conventional B&W darkroom printing, but of course YMMV.

I print my 4x5 Tri-X photographs with Piezotones on Hahnemuhle Photo Rag using an Epson 7600 printer driven by the StudioPrint RIP. I've found that one of the joys of doing B&W prints digitally is how easy it is to control both the shadows and the highlights. This is true because the ink/paper/printer combination is perfectly linear. There is no toe compressing the shadows like darkroom paper, and no shoulder compressing the highlights like darkroom paper. Well done ink jet prints can carry a huge amount of detail in both shadows and highlights.

The only things B&W inkjet printing lacks right now is 1) a really dense black, 2) the ability to print on glossy papers, 3) more competitive pricing for inks and papers. Everything else, IMHO, exceeds darkroom prints. Not bad for a technology in its infancy, I think.

[Brian Ellis]

I've been making digital prints from 4x5 (and 8x10) negatives for about a year and a half now with what I believe are excellent results. Iprefer digital printing because of the significantly greater control that it allows as compared with tradtional darkroom printing.

I don't offhand know of any major problems that are peculiar to black and white printing. Obviously you need to learn to use Photoshop (or I suppose some other editing software but Photoshop is pretty much the industry standard). You need a scanner and related software that will allow you to scan in 16 bits (the Epson 3200 is a popular inexpensive flat bed scanner that seems to work very well with 4x5). You should not (IMHO) use color inks for black and white printing, instead dedicate a printer to black and white and load it with MIS or Cone inks (I use MIS, friends use Cone, both can produce excellent results though Cone at the moment is in a transition period and I haven't seen anything done with their new inks). The Epson Ultrachrome inks in in the 2200 printer come closest to letting you get good blacks and whites from color inks as among the ones I've seen but even with them you can see the difference when compared side by side to prints made with Cone or MIS inks. You'll need curves developed for your inks and paper. You can download the MIS curves from their web site at no cost, Cone used to require that you purchase their proprietary software but their new system uses the printer software). Since black and white files are only a third the size of color you can get by with less RAM using black and white and things generally move along faster than they do with color.

There is an excellent digital black and white printing Yahoo discussion group that can provide you with detailed answers to almost any question you might have. Naturally having said that I now can't find the URL but you should be able to find it with a Google search. It's called something like "the digital black and white print."

[Brian Ellis]

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that Ken already provided a site to the Yahoo discussion group that I mentioned.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

I've found that one of the joys of doing B&W prints digitally is how easy it is to control both the shadows and the highlights



This is one of the most misleading statements I always hear from people making digital prints. If I understand correctly when making digital prints, the user has to calibrate the printer and the monitor to obtain reproducible results, which takes time and effort, yet when you ask them how much time they spent calibrating their paper most of the time this was never done and the usual response is "well I use the zone system."



The zone system, good as it is, is only an intermediate step in the reproduction process. One has to test the paper response and adjust the negative to the paper.



If you have compressed highlights or shadows, that is not because the process is less capable or harder, is only because the operator lacks the correct procedure. If those who have gone the digital route had taken as much care and effort in calibrating their materials as they do with digital output, perhaps they would still be using the darkroom.

[Ken Lee]

Jorge -

No doubt, the more calibrated your analog process, the better - just as with digital.

On the other hand, I think most reasonable and informed people would agree that the controls available in Photoshop offer an almost unlimited set of controls to modify contrast and brightness. The same can be said for its ability to control color balance, saturation, hue, etc.

This isn't about whether such controls are impossible with analog means. Rather, it's a statement that in the digital world, such controls are comparatively effortless, virtually instantaneous, and entirely repeatable.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Agreed Ken, but what I am saying is that perhaps all those "extra" controls are not necessary when things are calibrated properly.

From my experience until I learned the BTZS I had some of the same struggles Hogarth mentioned. Even with the zone system I often had either blown highlights and/or a morass of black with no separation, and of course to produce a "good" print required many of the tricks we all know, masking, flashing, 5 hands for dodge and burn, selenium intensification of the neg, etc, etc...then when I decided to print in pt/pd I realized I had to learn a better way to do this as those "tricks" are less effective and harder to do, so reading Davis's simple concept of "test your paper and adjust the negative to the paper" and putting it to use I have found I rarely have to do all those gymnastics I had to do before.

I will even go as far as saying that even with digital output, if you are still doing all that burning and dodging, masking, unsharp masking etc, you still do not have your process under control. Given than most people doing ink jet prints are printing in some kind of watercolor paper I am sure the reflection densities are not that different from a pt/pd print, yet as well calibrated your printers and monitors are, I bet few have taken the trouble to print a step tablet, see the exposure scale of your printed tablet and adjust your negative development so that when you scan it you get the same density range as the exposure scale of your paper.

My point is that is all a matter of proper testing and control of the materials. Of course, further aesthetic decisions might require the use of all these techniques, but they should not be the basis of saying "digital offers more control" or "digital is easier" since it is not if it is use to fix problems created by improper technique.

[Bruce Watson]

If you have compressed highlights or shadows, that is not because the process is less capable or harder, is only because the operator lacks the correct procedure.

Well, no. It is not about proceedure. It is about the laws of physics. Photographic paper has toe and shoulder response curves. Having toe and shoulder sensitometric response, by definition, compresses your shadows and highlights. You don't have to like it, but no amount of technique is going to change the laws of physics.

Inkjet prints, on the other hand, can exhibit linear response. Clearly, you have to linearize your printer/ink/paper. But you can get linear response, from black to white. No toe, no shoulder, no compression of tones.

On the other hand, I agree with you that you have to get your entire process under control regardless of the process you are using. I've done both. I've done the full darkroom thing of getting the range of tones on the negative to match the capabilities of the paper. I used to develop paper in tubes on Jobo to exact times (no watching the image form and pulling the image when it "looks right"). I even calibrated my paper's highlight dry down. The whole nine yards, basically right from Fred Picker's darkroom methods.

I've also done the equivalent system calibrations for my digital workflow.

If those who have gone the digital route had taken as much care and effort in calibrating their materials as they do with digital output, perhaps they would still be using the darkroom.

As I said, I have. For both conventional wet workflow and for digital workflow. When it's all said and done, I prefer digital printing, and 98% of what I do is B&W. I may well be wrong, but based on your posts, I would venture to guess that you haven't done much work with a digital workflow. And I'm not encouraging you to -- you should use the process that works for you.

Robb's post, however, wanted to know if controlling the deepest blacks and whitest whites is the problem... The short answer, from someone who prints all his B&W work on inkjet printers, is that controlling the deepest blacks and the whitest whites is in fact not a problem at all. There is no reason not to experiment with a digital B&W workflow if you want.

[Brian Ellis]

Every curve I've ever seen for digital printing is designed for use only with a specific paper or perhaps a small handful of papers. For example, the curves for the MIS inks I use are designed for use only with Epson Enhanced Matte and Crane's Museo papers. If you try to use the curves with other papers the results range from mediocre to terrible. So I'm not sure what is meant by the term "calibrating" paper for ink jet printing. The "calibration" is done in the design of the curve. Once you have the curve you have "calibrated" the paper that the curve was designed to be used with. Also, using unsharp masking doesn't mean the user has done something wrong. Unsharp masking is necessary with ink jet printing from scanned negatives because of the loss of "sharpness" that is inherent in the scanning process.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Well, no. It is not about proceedure. It is about the laws of physics. Photographic paper has toe and shoulder response curves. Having toe and shoulder sensitometric response, by definition, compresses your shadows and highlights. You don't have to like it, but no amount of technique is going to change the laws of physics.



It has nothing to do with physics, it has to with with lack of understanding of sensitometry principles. Although papers have a toe and a shoulder, nothing says that you have to print in those regions. Those of us who use alt methods have learned this and it is the reason, among others, why we use contrasty negatives. We simply "move" all the tones into the straight line of the curve.
But then, you followed Picker's methodology so I am not surprised that the results were less than satisfactory.



As you say, printing blacks and whites in an ink jet printer it probably is not hard, but then again is not "easier" than doing it in the darkroom either. That is my point, every time I read "I have more control and it is easier to print" I interpret I can fix my mistakes and lack of proper testing procedures in the computer easier than I can in the darkroom, and to that I agree.



I agree there is nothing wrong in trying digital methods, if this is going to improve the "artistic" content of the print, but if it is only going to be a band aid to poor darkroom procedures, well then probably the digital print will be crappy also.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Brian, I get what you say and that was my understading of ink jet prints. But tell me, how many times did you do this for your papers when you were doing darkroom prints? This is exactly my point, the digital workflow forces you to standarize and calibrate before you even make your first print, and if you change papers, you do it all over again, yet I bet you never did this with enlarging paper. What I mean is not the "max black" printing time that Picker promoted so much, but true sensitometric tests of your paper response.



Most people still doing darkroom prints either use VC paper, or have a bunch of different papers in different grades, I was one of those. I still have a shelf full of different grades and brands of papers. So of course, you go to a workflow that forces you to calibrate and standarize before you print all of the sudden the prints seem to be "easier" to make. I dont think this is a by product of the technology, I think this is a symptom of improper testing when using darkroom materials.

[Bruce Watson]

I don't know why I bother....

We simply "move" all the tones into the straight line of the curve.

Then, by definition, you print no blacks, and no whites. Your prints go from dark gray to light gray. If restricting your range of tones like this satisfies you, who am I to try to dissuade you? You should do what makes you happy.

But then, you followed Picker's methodology so I am not surprised that the results were less than satisfactory.

I never said that my prints were less than satisfactory. You said that, and you've never seen my prints. That's somewhat presumptuous of you, don't you think? And I don't even want to know what you have against Fred Picker.

Jorge, based on your posts here, I conclude that you are yet another digital bigot. Nothing I can say, no amount of logic, is going to make you any less bigoted, so I'm not going to try. Unlike you, however, I'm not going to deride someone else's process. I hope that you enjoy your alt process as much as I enjoy B&W inkjet printing.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Then, by definition, you print no blacks, and no whites. Your prints go from dark gray to light gray. If restricting your range of tones like this satisfies you, who am I to try to dissuade you? You should do what makes you happy.



Yeah, like you I dont know why I bother, but once again this statement shows a lack of understanding of the behavior of photographic materials, you do not need to be on the toe or the shoulder to print blacks and whites, as a matter of fact this is one of that basis for obtaining proper blacks and whites, have you heard of setting your Dmax as 90% of maximum black? I bet not..., but I wont go on with this.



I never said that my prints were less than satisfactory. You said that, and you've never seen my prints. That's somewhat presumptuous of you, don't you think? And I don't even want to know what you have against Fred Picker



Ah, you are correct, since you implied that you were printing and getting compressed values and that digital is "easier" I thought you were saying you were not happy with the prints, my mistake, but then if you think digital prints are "easier" and better, there must have been something wrong with your darkroom prints...no? I dont have anything against Picker, other than spreading faulty information. Yet I do have many of his wonderful gizmos.



Jorge, based on your posts here, I conclude that you are yet another digital bigot. Nothing I can say, no amount of logic, is going to make you any less bigoted, so I'm not going to try. Unlike you, however, I'm not going to deride someone else's process. I hope that you enjoy your alt process as much as I enjoy B&W inkjet printing.



Well Hogarth, I bought 2 Burkholder prints back in the early 80's and have known Dan since then, I knew about digital negs before you even thought about doing it. So your conclusions are wrong, and your logic faulty. Yet you do deride the darkroom process when you say that digital is "easier" and "better" because you "have no curve and compressed values" etc, and this is the only reason I decided to answer to your response, seems to me, like a reformed alcoholic, there is nothing worse than a convert, specially one with no understanding of the behavior of photographic materials.



I simply get tired of hearing that digital is "easier" and "has more control", when this is far from the truth, at least in B&W. I would not know about color since I dont do it, if I was doing color perhaps I would be doing digital prints.



If you are happy doing ink jet prints, good for you! but dont go on a public forum saying that is easier and better than darkroom work, specially when you lack understanding of proper testing procedures.

[Bruce Watson]

have you heard of setting your Dmax as 90% of maximum black?

Yes, I have. And that makes the dense parts of your prints dark gray, not black, by your own definition. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying it isn't black. And so are you.

Yet you do deride the darkroom process when you say that digital is "easier" and "better"

No. I do not deride the darkroom process. I just choose not to use it. You can delude yourself all you want, but I've never derided the darkroom process. Listen to what I actually say, not what you want to hear.

I simply get tired of hearing that digital is "easier" and "has more control", when this is far from the truth, at least in B&W.

Based on what you've writen here, I'd say you lack the experience necessary to make that claim. I do have the experience, and for me, it is somewhat easier, and I clearly have more control.

So much anger Jorge. So much anger. A fear of change I can understand. The anger directed at others who have different experience and different views, I don't understand that.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Yes, I have. And that makes the dense parts of your prints dark gray, not black, by your own definition. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying it isn't black. And so are you.



Ah well, clearly you have never seen a print done this way or you would not state this.And no, I am not saying this.



Based on what you've writen here, I'd say you lack the experience necessary to make that claim. I do have the experience, and for me, it is somewhat easier, and I clearly have more control.



You dont know what experience I have, but then as you say, for you it provides more control, but that does not mean it is an universal law that automatically makes digital easier.



So much anger Jorge. So much anger. A fear of change I can understand. The anger directed at others who have different experience and different views, I don't understand that.



Ah yes, the anger response. If you choose to think of my response as anger simply because I choose to expose the fallacy that digital is "easier" then go ahead, I have no problem with this. Seems the anger comes from you because I dared to oppose your view. I have not said digital is "bad", only that is not easier than darkroom work, if you kow what you are doing.

[Jay DeFehr]

Hi Robb. I make my B&W prints in a darkroom, the old fashioned way, but I've been researching digital imaging to learn wether or not there is a place for it in my "toolbox". From what I've learned, I think it's possible that the preference for color digital prints might have something to do with their comparison to C type, chemical prints, and the permanence issues involved. In other words, a color inkjet print might be more satisfying relative to a C print, than a B&W inkjet print is relative to a traditional, darkroom printed B&W print. I could be wrong, and if so, I appologize. As for the second part of your question, I would suggest that controlling the deepest blacks and whites whites is the biggest chalenge in printing B&W, regardless of the technology involved. Digital processes, or workflows, have their own unique set of tools to deal with these issues, as do darkroom printers. I can't speak to which is easier, as I have no experience with digital workflows. I would only add that, to me, ease and convenience are poor reasons to choose one process over another if one's intentions are artistic. I think the old adage, "you get what you pay for" applies here, and in the realms of artistic expression and craftsmanship, one pays with patience, dedication, commitment and persistence. I wish you the best of luck and greatest success, whichever methods you choose to use.

[Geoffrey Swenson]

I think we should take out Jorge the have a couple of beers to loosen him up and buy him Photoshop since he will have to get to it sooner or later.

For the life of me I cannot understand why he is such a sourpuss when it comes to digital. He has some valid points, but all you have to do is to post something even remotely relevant to pixels and presto, there he goes :-))

“I agree there is nothing wrong in trying digital methods, if this is going to improve the "artistic" content of the print, but if it is only going to be a band aid to poor darkroom procedures, well then probably the digital print will be crappy also. ”

Yes, I have the same opinion, however in the hand of an accomplished printer (often a former analog master) the digital process DOES HAVE more control! Take it or leave it, but this is a fact of life. Traditional printing methods are wonderful tools in the hand of an expert, but the world moves ahead and we’ll be doing things differently than we had been doing in the Middle Ages :-((

[Jay DeFehr]

Geoffry, I hope I don't earn myself the label of sourpuss here,but while you make some valid points, I think your esimation of the future of B&W printing is a little skewed. The digital workflow may or may not offer more control to its practitioners, I'm not in a position to confirm or deny that, but a digital print is a long way from posessing the image quality offered by a traditional darkroom print. I think that the digital workflow represents a tangient to traditional darkroom work more than it does an evolution of it. I don't see darkroom work disapearing in favor of digital methods, but existing along side them for the forseeable future, which, granted, isn't very far. Regardless of the amount of control availabe to the digital worker, a digital print is not a continuous tone print, and as such, will never aproach the quality possible by traditional, chemical methods. That is another fact of life, which you're free to take or leave. Wether or not that difference in quality is worth the differences in methods is for each of us to decide for ourselves, but to deny its existence is dishonest.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

For the life of me I cannot understand why he is such a sourpuss when it comes to digital. He has some valid points, but all you have to do is to post something even remotely relevant to pixels and presto, there he goes :-))



Funny, if I expose the fallacy that digital is "easier" and has more control, I am a sourpuss and angry. I really dont care about the method, I do care about this continued mistatements and false promises. If you are all so happy with your method, why keep insisting to compare it to traditional methods. I just as soon have you say for me is easier and be done with it. In the end Geoffrey, I assure I will still be taking pictures with my 75 year old Korona far beyond the time you are in PS 10000.1. Dont need it, I do know how to make prints in a darkroom, no need to use all the special tricks that come with PS.

[Brian Ellis]

Jorge - I don't know what others mean when they say that they have more control when printing digitally but when I say that I mean that I can do the same things I could do with traditional darkroom printing but I can do them much better. I can do the equivalent of dodging, burning, flashing, printing different areas of the print at different contrasts, elimination or minimization of distracting elements, unsharp masking, etc. digitally with much more precision and control over the results than is possible in a traditional darkroom. I also can do those things in situtations that would be impossible in a traditional darkroom. For example, last night I made a print that had numerous small tree branches against a light gray sky. I wanted to burn the tree branches but without affecting the background sky. Impossible to do in a traditional darkroom but relatively easy digitally. I also see the results of doing each of those things faster than I can in a traditional darkroom and if I don't like the results I can try again with greater precision and less effort.

Equally important, once I make one adjustment to my liking I can save it and move on to other adjustments without having to worry about repeating the initial adjustment correctly each time I make subsequent adjustments.

Finally, a lot of traditional darkroom work is just pure drudgery that doesn't involve any creative effort - mixing chemicals, jiggling trays, cleaning trays, washing prints, etc. etc. All of that drudge work is eliminated when printing digitally so that almost the entire time I'm printing I'm making and implementing creative decisions. I don't think I typically spend a whole lot less time making a digital print than I did a traditional print. However, my time is better spent because it doesn't take five minutes of jiggling trays to see the results of a change and I don't have to spend time setting up, taking down, cleaning, washing, etc.

For all of these reasons, and probably others that don't come to mind immediately, I believe I make better prints by scanning film and printing digitally than I was able to do for the most part in a traditional darkroom (and I guess I should say, hopefully without sounding immodest, that I'm an excellent traditional darkroom printer, the four weeks I spent taking all of John Sexton's darkroom workshops weren't wasted). I don't think I'm alone in that belief. Several months ago a small group of us participated in a demonstration at an art center where we showed a group of our traditional prints and then showed digital prints from the same negatives. The improvements in the digital prints compared to the traditional prints were very obvious even to the non-photographers in the audience.

I have no problem with you or anyone else who doesn't choose to print digitally for whatever reason. I'm just explaining what I mean when I say that I have greater control when printing digitally since you seemed to think the claims made by digital printers for greater control were invalid.

[Geoffrey Swenson]

Jorge,

Brian said it well, so I won’t. What I try to say is that you don’t have jump on each and every thread and turn it into a vendetta against the Mean Computer People. I’ve said it many times, that it isn’t important how you make your prints as the end the results rein supreme.

Still, to introduce digital somewhere along the process is wise, at least these days. If you want to keep doing what you have been doing all your life then it is fine, but don’t keep insisting that everything new is bad. Some of it is, but computers make your life easier at times. Just think of the ugly work of spotting. It might be a therapy for you but most of us can be without it.

If it is a consolation for you, I do prefer to use film and not digital capture. I like the touch and smell of sheet film, but sadly, eventually I have to give it up. The film companies will make me do it :-((

[Steve J Murray]

Just a little perspective.

Photography is over 100 years old as a technology. Silver prints or platinum prints were not the original medium. I don't know how many different technologies that have been used since the beginning, but it is considerable. Each has their own charm for certain people. What I'm saying is that photography is nothing more than using light to "capture" an image onto a light sensitive medium and then printing it, and nowadays displaying it on a computer screen seems to be another form of presentation, like it or not.

For each individual artist, certain ways of doing this will appeal to him or her more than others, for a variety of reasons. We choose our methods based on the way we like to work and for the results we are trying to achieve. Not too long ago a woman posted a question in this forum about 4x5 and pricing. She mentioned she previously had been making large prints from scanned negs from a Holga camera (cheap/disposable plastic medium format camera) and printing them with a large Epson 7000 inkjet printer. She was getting 2 to 3 thousand dollars each for her prints. This pretty much blew away a lot of people here, but she defended her art quite articulately, making several valid points about the nature and reality of photography and art sales in the modern world.

BTW, this is a great forum and I thoroughly enjoy the vast depth of knowledge found here. A heated debate is OK too once in a while, it shows we're alive!

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Brian, I understand and know what you are saying. There is no doubt that PS is a very powerful tool and if you so choose you can work on the image pixel by pixel. But all this is immaterial, if you have found a better way to express your photography I am glad for you. But this does not necessarily means your way is better or worse, or that all those controls are necessary to make a good print.

In the end if all this controls were producing significantly better prints, everybody would have changed already and traditional photography would be dead. I have not seen that happened, nor do I see many people saying "wow, I want to learn how to do that" when they see an ink jet print.

Geoffrey, perhaps you failed to read where I talk about buying and accepting digitally produced prints before you and most here even thought about going this way. I, unlike you, have put my money where my mouth is. I accept digital as a viable way to make beautiful prints. I dont accept on the other hand that it "exceeds everything darkroom produced". That is all, and will continue to say so here every time I read it even if it bothers you.

Is time to let digital stand on its own and the work made this way speak for itself, this unceasing comparisons with traditional darkroom work are not benefiting either camp, and to say that digital produced prints exceed anything that can be done in the darkroom is plain wrong.

[Ryan M]

"Is time to let digital stand on its own and the work made this way speak for itself, this unceasing comparisons with traditional darkroom work are not benefiting either camp, and to say that digital produced prints exceed anything that can be done in the darkroom is plain wrong."

Amen Jorge, I can't agree with you more. They are both different mediums. Painting is not printmaking, nor is digital imaging traditional photography.

For me, it really comes down to how I like to work. I can not stand being in front of a computer and I like working in a darkroom. Other people prefer the computer. To each his or her own.

[Geoffrey Swenson]

Jorge,

”Geoffrey, perhaps you failed to read where I talk about buying and accepting digitally produced prints before you and most here even thought about going this way.

No, I remember your saying that!

“”I don’t accept on the other hand that it "exceeds everything darkroom produced".”

I don’t think that the majority of us say that, especially in the case of B&W, and definitely not I. At least not yet.

Is time to let digital stand on its own and the work made this way speak for itself, this unceasing comparisons with traditional darkroom work are not benefiting either camp, and to say that digital produced prints exceed anything that can be done in the darkroom is plain wrong.

I agree with you, but remember your statement when someone, I hope not me, mentions comparisons. Just let it slide :-))

[James_3755]

"Not too long ago a woman posted a question in this forum about 4x5 and pricing. She mentioned she previously had been making large prints from scanned negs from a Holga camera (cheap/disposable plastic medium format camera) and printing them with a large Epson 7000 inkjet printer. She was getting 2 to 3 thousand dollars each for her prints. This pretty much blew away a lot of people here, but she defended her art quite articulately, making several valid points about the nature and reality of photography and art sales in the modern world. "

I'm not saying I'm the world's greatest photographer nor printer but yet I do visit many galleries in a years time. I have notice one thing, digital prints don't sell for the same dollars as wet process does, not even close overall. I know of few digital printers getting this kind of money per print. It easy to stamp a high dollar price tag on anything, the juice is getting it! Maybe she is, then again I would think the name would be fairly known if she was. I think nothing beats platinum or carbon but I've seen some great work out of digital in both color and B&W, but yet it would seem in the world of selling prints digital lags behind across the board compared to the more traditional wet process..

James