Is there a major difference between RGB prints and wet printing.

[beau.morgan]

I am new in the photography game and have been learning about analogue printing,

processesing colour, for the first time. I have had a lot of work printed digitally by pro labs

and I know that sending negs or slide for printing requires scanning. My question is are there

major differences in quality and colour reproduction between RGB printing and traditional

printing techniques? Is there any industry standards that require traditional or wet

photography over Digital? I would compare my own RA4 prints but my colour handling leaves

much to be desired. I am really interested to hear opinions on this or any technical info that

could be shared.

 

Cheers.

[Ed_Ingold]

You want to cover a lot of territory. Think of all the combinations - wet prints from film (conventional enlarging), wet prints from digital or scanned film (Fuji or Noritsu printers), inkjet prints or dye-sublimation prints from digital or scanned film. There are other technologies, but these are the most common used for photography.

 

You've seen wet prints done from film, and probably from other media as well. You have to form your own opinions about the quality of the results.

 

Wet prints have a limited lifetime before fading of 15 to 25 years, depending on the display conditions. Dye-sublimation prints look very much like Fuji Crystal C (wet) prints, and have about the same longevity (per http://www.wilhelm-research.com) but are strictly digital to digital. Inkjet prints with dye inks have a larger gamut and are generally sharper than wet prints, and have a comparable life. Inkjet prints using pigment inks are very stable, and can last for tens if not hundreds of years. The pigments are minerals or highly stable metal-organic solids.

 

Printing from digital images makes color management a lot easier than in the darkroom. You can make all the adjustments on a calibrated (profiled) computer monitor instead of making test prints. It is also much easier to make digital prints from slides than in the darkroom. Photographic quality inkjet printers have revolutionized photography in the last decade.

 

Gallery prints are usually required to be on photographic paper (including digital prints on Crystal C, using a Lightjet printer) or archival ink jets. Most photography clubs require conventional film and printing, and tend to eschew digital processes of any sort. Inkjet prints made on an Iris printer have a special status, called "Giclee" prints. This is pure sophistry, IMO.

 

There! You know it all. Now go take some pictures.

[peufeu]

When you scan film or slide, you lose a bit of quality.

However digital printing offers more flexibility than analog printing : color correction, sharpening, selective dodging/burning, manipuation, etc. So, you gain quality compared to analog printing, because all these thigs that were really time consuming and hard to do become accessible.

 

So, depending on the technologies and techniques used, and the operator skill, you may gain in digital printing more than you lose in scanning, and get an awesome result. Or not.

 

It's hard to compare prints because there are so many factors, it even includes how many hours of sleep the operator had the night before ;) or if you fall in love with the look of a certain process...

 

You're the judge in the end.

[simon_meeds]

"Most photography clubs require conventional film and printing, and tend to eschew digital processes of any sort."

 

This may have been true 10 or even 5 years ago, but in my current experience most clubs are much more than 50% digital (make that 80-90% for the club to which I belong - I am one of very few "still" taking film, and I believe we only have one film-only worker).

 

Perhaps you haven't come across the RPS Digital Imaging Group? - www.digit.org.uk

[scott_eaton]

<I>When you scan film or slide, you lose a bit of quality</i><P>Bullsh_t....complete and utter BS. I would say 70% of the conventional custom printing I've had done over the years by labs other than myself and bigger than 8x10 suffers sharpness problems. If I take RG25 neg or Velvia chrome to five different labs, and have five different <b>conventional</b> 16x20's made, all five of those prints will look different in terms of color. I can <b>guarantee</b> you several of those prints will have to be remade because the loser doing the printing decides to eye-ball the focus because he's too lazy to use a grain focuser. Also, most labs refuse to use glass carriers with film because it incurs higher retouching costs due to dust, and as far as I'm concerned 35mm film requires a glass carrier when projection printed beyond 8x10. Or, you have some miraculous light source in your enlarger that doesn't emit infra-red.<P>Film scanners on the other hand don't have those problems. Once you get a tack sharp scan from film, that's it. You no longer have to worry about losing sharpness or detail. At 4000dpi your average consumer desktop scanner will <b>destroy</b> a projection print from 35mm because the later has too many variables involved to keep a sharp film plane on the paper. I honestly don't give a flaming you_know_what how much theoretical resolution film has compared to a film scanner, and have wasted too much time already arguing about it. Once you stick a piece of color film in a projection enlarger you have too many varibles working against getting that information into a reflection print without severe distortion. Digital printer don't have this problem.<P>There are some limits with the out-put dpi of some commercial printers that can't match the old methods. Even at 300dpi a Fuji Frontier can't quite get the sharpness from a 6x7 color neg printed to 8x10 if I were to hand print it back at my lab. However, once I start getting up to 16x20, the digital scan beats the optical print once again.<P>Scanning is also the only rational method of getting a decent color print from a slide. <P>

 

Over the years I've remastered many, many, many of my conventional prints I've sold to friends and clients into a digital form and re-printed them. Every single time the digital print mops the floor with the conventional print. With the digital scan I can fix dye mismatches with film/paper, print Kodak films on Fuji paper without saturation problems, etc. The only time I was ever really able to get a perfect conventional color print from film was using very specific film/paper matches like Kodak VPS/NC on Portra, or Fuji NPH/NHG on Crystal Archive type C. Everything else was a dice toss. With digital scanning and printing, I'm not handcuffed into those restraints.<P><I>Is there any industry standards that require traditional or wet photography over Digital?</i><P>B&W contact printing is the only one left and with justification.

[Ed_Ingold]

Thanks, Simon. You are probably right, depending on the location and topics of interest. I last checked 2 years ago, and digital was still relegated to a single category in local clubs (Chicago area). Last year, all of the exhibited prints were conventional. Their photos show exception composition skills, but the technical quality is well below what I expect out of digital. For the moment, digital photography still travels in steerage.

[KenPapai]

<i>"Most photography clubs require conventional film and printing, and tend to eschew digital processes of any sort. "</i>

<p>

I would say just the opposite.

 

As for the original question, what do you mean by "RGB printing?"

High quality inkjet printing from a digital source? If so then we have reached the point where the best archival quality (inks & paper) inkjets really *cannot* be beat.

[van_camper]

I pretty much agree with Scott. However, there is ciba (Ilfochrome). Many top galleries do not want to move away from this material. Check out Tomtill.com, Fatali.com. It is hard to reproduce the look any other way. Extremely rich colors, very glossy, and a pain in the foot while you make your highlight masks ro control contrast. These guys do all their prints to 30x40 (don't think they realize other sizes exist), and Fatali is charging up to $9k for some of his images. Obviously, it has to be good.

 

I have done the wet method for 31 yrs, and had enough. You will experience less frustration, do it faster, get sharper prints, easily reproduce duplicates for resale, have far longer lifespan, better blacks, slightly better gamut (Epson 9800) over most wet prints, sharper, very fine control in adjusting your image like never before. Except for ciba, I wouldn't consider anything but inkjet. The closest to ciba now is the Pictorica PGHG white film, but with less archival life. Also your learning curve for RA4 wet prints will be a lot longer (skills not easily picked up) before you start making good prints. Adjusting color contrast isn't easy (unless you want to do the extra work using Anderson or Dignan method)..but now you will have lots of fun doing multiple rewashing, starting in b/w chemistry and ending in color chemistry. These methods can give you "immense" color boosts, but with a lot of work. Moving a slider on Hue/saturation is far easier.

[b_hall1]

Laser printers take digital files and expose photo paper which is then wet processed as C prints. But Lightjet or Lambda printers are about $500,000 in cost while a Chromira printer is likely half that. Also there are mini-lab laser photo printers. So if you want to make C prints at home that requires an optical enlarger and use of print film...

 

But inkjet now has a lot of attention with these eight-ink systems. Inkjet is not continuous tone while C prints are continuous tone. And there is dye sublimation printing which is continuous tone. Actually, I think the inkjet look is developing. Inkjet may now be archival but easily scratched ?