Re: [Leica] Epson paper/ink question

["Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>]

From: Lee, Jonathan <Jonathan.Lee@hrcc.on.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 1999 20:47
Subject: RE: [Leica] Epson paper/ink question


> I've been mulling over digital darkroom stuff for a
> while, and I was wondering whether there is a site
> anywhere out there which has silver printed and
> scanned and inkjet printed images of the same b+w
> negative?

Since so much would be affected by the scan of both and their posting to the
Web, would this really be a reliable comparison?

Note that using a digital darkroom never prevents you from having your images
printed on the medium of your choice, since you can always have important stuff
printed by a lab on photographic paper, if you don't have the means to print in
that way yourself.  In the meantime, you can print with a nice photo printer.
If the prints fade one day, you can just print them again.  As long as you have
the scans, the lifetime of the photos is unlimited.

Overall, a digital darkroom is about a jillion times easier to use and more
practical than a real darkroom.  While you still must resort to film to actually
take the pictures, if you want the best possible image quality, the rest you can
handle on your computer, unless you have very specific and unusual requirements.
Take the pictures on film, scan the film (or have it scanned, if you want
extremely high resolution scans or don't want to buy a scanner), and then do the
rest in the digital realm.  Once the image is scanned, you can print it on
anything, so nothing is sacrificed.

I scan everything directly from film.  While I enjoy taking pictures, I don't
like lab or darkroom work at all, so I keep all my photos in the digital realm
and play with them there.  Once you get used to Photoshop, it's a thousand times
easier and more pleasant to use than any darkroom technique, and it's about a
thousand times faster as well.

  -- Anthony