On Thursday, April 11, 2002, at 08:01 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Is it true that BW quality digital output is limited to quadtone inks,
and that only matte paper is available for such output?
Quadtone for quality: it depends. Quadtone is much better than printing
black ink only -- better blending, better detail, less patterning.
Black ink only adds a kind of grain to the image, but depending on the
film and the print size, it is not always noticeable. APX 25 printed at
4x6 would look like crap this way, but TX printed 16x20 would look fine.
Another option is to make duotones in Photoshop, but using this method
you can never get a truly neutral print. If you like to print on
warmtone or coldtone papers in the darkroom, duotones will suit you fine.
As to matte paper, paper choice depends on what inks are used and how
they react. I've seen some excellent glossy inkjet papers, but they do
not produce a good print with every kind of ink -- for instance,
Tetenal's high gloss paper is phenomenal in dye-based printers like the
older Epsons and the newer not-so-archival printers, but it absolutely
STINKS in the pigment-based machines like the 2000P and the 7500 (the
pigment never drops below the surface layer, just sitting on top looking
like paint). However, Ilford's new Galerie glossy stuff is great in the
7500, so if the issue with quadtone on glossy was because of the
pigments being incompatible with certain papers, that may no longer be a
problem.
-Aaron
p.s. you know it's my busy season when I am 500 messages behind in my
PDML reading even AFTER deleting the Queen Mum/motorcycle helmet/smoking
threads.
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