On Thu, 2010-02-04 at 00:04 -0800, Angel Robert Marquez wrote:
> I may have
> done something other that achieved the same results in the PS
> environment,
> after all that is what these apps are supposed to enable us as users
> to do.
Getting serious, excuse my flippancy
I hadn't realised how difficult and how much of a challenge monochrome
photography poses for digital and computer based printing workflows. If
we ignore the fact that it is simply mathematically impossible for
digital imagining to match film colour and monochrome, monochrome is
still out of digital reach and this makes it difficult for POD
technology.
Dodge and burn are fundamental tools for manipulating photos, both
colour and monochrome. My problem is I have to work out a procedure of
getting monochrome into book format at top high end and nothing less.
Given the lackings of photoshop/gimp/cinepaint it does seem to me that
the only way possible to go, top high end here, is to print onto 10x8
inch rc paper, tone in selenium and then scan RGB from these prints. So,
we are still nowhere near what a 10x8 silver gelatin print can do when
it comes to scanning a 4x5 neg in a drum scanner and manipulating this
in a digital image app. Of course, colour is far easier for digital
given colour doesn't place anywhere near the elastic forces monochrome
puts on digital. So it becomes a question of where to insert, at what
level. Photoshop can be used to clean up dust and artefacts, trivial
stuff one usually passes onto a computer scientist. But beyond that, out
of its league it appears.
According to high end digital labs here, the best way to go is to copy
the print onto 10x8 inch Ektachrome with a copy camera and then drum
scanning this 10x8 chrome. However, it does appear on the horizon flat
bed scanners may soon come close to the above copy camera procedure.
Whatever, given B&W negs are out for high scanning and printing, I need
to do some rc prints.
The other reason for this is I need to be able to brief a designer,
including knowing the limits of digital imaging and suggest ways around
these limits. best, cj
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