Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/07/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]> classic. The digital > enlargements just have a digital quality to them and the prints > just don't > have the same "depth" as do those from optical enlargements. > > We've recently been to photo galleries and the same seems to be > true for > "high end" lightjet, glicee prints etc. > > I am afraid that alot of people who've jumped over to digital > printing are > either fooling themselves into ignoring the lowered quality or > have done so > for purely commercial reasons. My experience has been that a) there can be a different look to "digital" prints - the same way there is a different look to prints on different types of paper, or printed with a different type of enalrger head, or the difference between say dye transfer and regular colour printing (not talking quality here, just a different look). b) on quality - it's like traditonal darkroom printing - it takes a skillful technician/craftsman to do it well - and they are as rare in the digital world as the darkroom world. Was the 35mm slide scanned on a high qulity drum scanner, with lots of bit depth and ppi, by a skilled operator? Was it worked on in Photoshop by someone who really knew what they were doing, with colour management, understood their white points and black points and so on and so on? Was it tagged with the manufacturers profile for the Frontier printer? See what I mean. My own personal test of this was a 4x5 negative. I got it custom printed by a pro lab I have always been pleased with at 24x30. I also got it drum scanned, worked on it myself (one of my jobs is as a digital imaging technician) and had it printed on a lightjet on Fuji Crystal Archive paper. It blew the traditional print away in every way. There's bad quality darkroom printing, and there's bad quality digital work (probably more bad than good around, 'cause everyone thinks they can do it). But there is also excellent printing in both areas. They may or may not end up having different looks (my fuji print had what you might call a very traditional photographic look) - but that happens in both arenas. tim a - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html