[Leica] Re: Prints from slides

[pieter@world.std.com (Pieter Bras)]

They use a Kodak LED digital color printer, which they refer to as a
"Pegasus" printer.  It images at 250 dpi on RA4 color paper.  The
results look like normal enlargements to the naked eye (mine, at least).
If you inspect them with a strong enough magnifier, you can see that the
image was laid down in raster fashion, though the rows of dots merge
together quite well.

I am not sure what equipment they used to digitize my slide.  They
advertise that they have a SciTex EverSmart scanner.  I would guess that
the scanner optical quality has as much (or maybe more) to do with the
overall sharpness of the results than the sampling rate at which the
slide is being scanned.  They produce a TIFF file at 250 dpi of output.

Obviously, the scanning and printing steps can be completely
independent.  However, they (Boston Photo) claim that their overall
process is the best available anywhere.

Since the first effort was for my purposes just a proof, I had them do
no cropping, touching-up, color correction, etc.  Just scan, then print.

The overall results were good, but still left room for improvement, as
noted before.  I am sending the digital print to the Ilfochrome printer
(Portland Photographics), along with a request that they try to do
better, if they can.  Once I have the Ilfochrome print, I will show it
to Boston Photo and... we'll see.

Charles Dunlap <cdunlap@es.UCSC.EDU> wrote:

>I had a 6 X 9 inch print made, on 8 X 10 paper, They scanned the
>original at 250 dpi of output, that is the slide was digitized to
>1500 X 2250 pixels.  It was printed on Kodak professional color paper.

What is the name of this process?

I am aware of three commercial processes for digitally printing a slide.
One is Evercolor (incredibly expensive), the second is Iris or Giclee
(more affordable), the third is Lambda (almost competitive with Ciba in
price).  As best I could determine that print that the initial report
concerned was made by Irvine Photo Graphics, Inc. in S. California using
the Lambda process.

It sounds like the print that you had made was on something different
since I've only heard rave reviews of the three processes named.

- - -Charlie

- -- 
Pieter Bras        pieter@world.std.com