Re: [Leica] FW: ways to improve bw puter prints

[Joe Berenbaum <joe-b@dircon.co.uk>]

At 08:21 AM 4/20/99 -0500, you wrote:
>
>
>"4. there seems to be something about the detail you can capture in a
>darkroom print in subtle ways which does not seem to be present in my
>computer prints."
>
>What I would suggest you do, is after you scan your photos, you convert the
>black and white image from greyscale to RGB. You can do this in your imaging
>program.  This will give you more tonality as your printer will use all of
>its inks.  Sounds silly, but it works.  You may want to try it.

I don't know what scanner is being used here, but if you scan a B&W image
as greyscale then you lose data at the scanning stage that cannot be
recaptured by converting later on to RGB. What I do, using a LS2000, is to
scan the negative in RGB (millions of colours rather than 255 levels of
grey) at the highest resolution and keep the image as RGB for any
adjustment in Photoshop before converting to greyscale as the last thing I
do, if I do that at all (I usually don't). Doing it this way round I have
to deal with large file sizes but I get extremely good b&w prints from an
Epson Photo 700 on Epson Photo paper. If the file that I'm printing is
still RGB and I want a black and white print rather than a brown one, I
simply tell the printer immediately before printing to print in black
rather than in colour. Quality is apparently not affected by doing this. I
like to see my friends' jaws drop when I hand them a computer print that is
better than most conventional prints they have seen... 



Joe Berenbaum