> Posted by Danilo Janno (Daniloj) on Tuesday, June 21, 2005 - 10:59 am: > > I'm a old fan of analogic darkroom and for many years I have printed > (b/w & color) with a great satisfaction. > Now, with a digital camera (coolpix) and a photo printer (epson) I > don't have good results. Someone knows if there is a printer that give > a good results (almost at 18x24 cm) as my old enlarger?
Remember how long it took to learn to make great prints in the fume-room? Well, you are not quite starting over from the beginning, but the digital darkroom has an even steeper learning curve for those who are starting green.
Interestingly other than skills that need to be developed, the main culprit in poor quality images is not the printer, but the monitor. One processes the image so it looks good on the monitor. If the monitor is out of calibration, the printer has no way of knowing. It just prints what you send it. If the monitor contrast is abnormally high, you will get muddy prints. If the monitor contrast is low, then the opposite prevails. If the monitor is biased to red, your prints will have a cyan bias.
It is also vital to choose the paper you are printing on from the list in the printer driver dialogue. Choosing correctly invokes a profile for that ink and paper combination. Also choose one of the highest quality settings for printer resolution.
My old workhorse, a 13" dye-ink 1280 is worn out and in the shop. In the mean time, I bought the bottom of the line letter sized photo printer. I am getting superb results and it is very quick. If the 1280 can not be repaired, I plan to buy the pigment-ink R2400 to replace it. The 2400 at its sisters, the 4800, 7800 and 9800 represent the current state of the art in fine-art printers. The gamut is equal to or better than dye-ink printers, and properly framed and displayed prints may last one to three centuries without showing any fading.
The museum community is very excited about these third generation printers. The first generation of pigment-ink prints had great longevity, but small gamut that was strongly influenced by the light under which the prints were viewed. Blacks looked bronzed when light reflected off the glossy paper. The second generation extended the gamut, but there were still some problems with the blacks and the longevity was shortened somewhat. This generation seems to have solved all the previous problems.
However, even with a colour managed and calibrated monitor and the best profiles for each paper, it still comes down to the skills of the person doing the printing. In the fume-room, one could make the print lighter or darker, and adjust the colour balance. Beyond that the only controls were dodging and burning. The digital-darkroom adds curves and gamma, precise control of dynamic range, saturation, sharpening, noise control and so on. A thick book could be written on the power of layers alone. Much more challenging.
If it took you a year or two to become a master printer in the fume-room, it will take several times that to reach the same level of virtuosity in the digital darkroom. Be patient, and learn processing thoroughly. I have made stunning prints 13"x19" {329mm x 483mm) off my first camera a CP990, as well as my CP5000 and CP8400. I started learning image processing on an Amiga computer in the late 1980s and am still learning with a high-power Pentium workstation and Photoshop CS2. No one knows it all, but the prints get better and better.
larry!
http://www.larry-bolch.com/ ICQ 76620504