I recently saw lightjet prints for the first time. They are beautiful. Someone here has suggested that they are not good for B&W because of a limited tonal response at the black end of the scale. I don't know if that is true, but for color, the prints are stunning. My understanding is that the print is made on traditional color print paper using the same chemicals always used. What is different is that the exposure is made using digitally controlled color LEDs that pixel-by-pixel expose the paper. The result is a traditional color print with the advantage of the vast control offered by digital technology in making the exposure (by adjustments to the digital data in the file controlling the printer). This looks like a very useful technology for people working in color. People definitely ARE exhibiting these prints in juried shows and doing very well. Prints of poster size from 35mm negatives looked indistinguishable from traditional prints.
Black and white seems to be another issue. It is certainly possible to create ordinary silver prints in an enlarger (etc.) using a negative that has been created from digital data (an extra step that the Lightjet technology does not require). I haven't tried this, but there are books (and Internet articles) on the subject of handling the data in order to get good output. Once a good negative is achieved, the printing process is identical with traditional processes and the result (a silver print) also should be the same (assuming the negative has been done properly). The beauty of this is that all the dodging and burning is done once in the computer and embedded, so to speak, in the digital data so that no maniplation is later required with the negative in the enlarger. I have seen color positives made this way as an intermediate step for commercial printing. If done correctly, the output I've seen shows no pixelation or other evidence of digital artifacts, but I have never actually seen an "art" print made for exhibition and on photographic paper (as opposed to commercial printing--book covers etc.) from a digital negative or positive, color or B&W. If anyone has, I'd be interested to know what they thought. The piezography technique for B&W is essentially a high-quality inkjet printer using archivally sound inks. I have seen these exhibited as well, and what I have seen is, for the most part, beautiful, but these are not silver prints. I wonder about the need to worry about that. I haven't made up my mind, but tiny dots of ink on paper forming an image is really no more mechanical or any less authentic, it seems to me, than tiny specs of tarnished silver doing the same thing. The critical question in my mind is whether the digital printing can match the subtletly we KNOW silver is capable of. It is not at all clear to me yet that that is the case. To go back to the above, I get the feeling from what I have seen that Lightjet for color is capable of matching ordinary color printing (although I have not seen nudes done with the Lightjet technology (see below)). I was so impressed by what I saw at a recent show including both Lightjet color prints and B&W piezzography prints that the following day I took a B&W negative and a master print to the shop that did the work I saw to have an example done to see how well the process fit my own work. So far, I've had a high resolution scan made (creating a 66Mb B&W file--the equivalent of a 200Mb color file at the same resolution) and looked at proofs on high-quality rag printmaking papers. The exhibited prints I saw were great. My own work, so far, has looked disappointing. I am having one of my nudes done and, so far, my impression is that delicate skin-tone gradations may be just beyond the limits of the process. Note that I am talkin about VERY small differences, here, but at close quarters, the print looks noticeably less subtle than the master (silver) print. I have not seen the final output yet (in a couple of days). I will report back. I suspect that landscape and other subjects put less "stress" on the tonal separation than do large expanses of flesh (and perhaps Lightjet color nudes would be disappointing as well). Anyway, I hope that is helpful to the person who posted the original question about silver prints from digital files. Colin __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
