Can paper catch screens?

[nirpat89]

It hasn't come up yet (Or if it has and I read right over it, I apologize), but the "luminance" of screens has become a big part of the viewing experience for most folks when comparing paper and screens. It's somehow "better" if it glows back at you.  I'm certainly susceptible, and I think most of us are.  If you doubt, next time you're viewing an appealing on-screen image, just reach up there and start pushing around the brightness setting on your screen. Or try it from the other end and enjoy a really good print, then view the same image onscreen.  With changes in luminance come changes in how we see.

May be someone will invent a set of electroluminescent inks that you can put in your pigment printer, print your image and then attach to a little battery to make it glow back at you.  Best of both worlds?  Crazy?

[nirpat89]

I wonder if there will be a bifurcation in the photography world as a result of this competition, perceived or not.  All digital becomes the "Traditional" photography where the end product is pixels and the other being the "Print" photography where the end product is as the name suggests something you can hold, hang and pass it to the next generation.  May be a vast majority of people will simply not have any incentive to print, being satisfied as they are with the speed and the quantity and immediacy of being able to share their work in the digital realm.  That will make the prints rare and perhaps more in demand in the "art" world, particularly hand made hybrid prints (digital origin, analog end.)  Does that give one all the more reason to focus on the print? 

Just thinking out loud....

[Mark D Segal]

I wonder if there will be a bifurcation in the photography world as a result of this competition, perceived or not.  All digital becomes the "Traditional" photography where the end product is pixels and the other being the "Print" photography where the end product is as the name suggests something you can hold, hang and pass it to the next generation.  May be a vast majority of people will simply not have any incentive to print, being satisfied as they are with the speed and the quantity and immediacy of being able to share their work in the digital realm.  That will make the prints rare and perhaps more in demand in the "art" world, particularly hand made hybrid prints (digital origin, analog end.)  Does that give one all the more reason to focus on the print? 

Just thinking out loud....

You have a point. The world is swamped with images on computer screens and hand-held devices; those of the good photographers remain good however they are conveyed; but good photographs that are well-printed on paper do have a special appeal that all kinds of people - not only in the "art" world - still appreciate and I think will continue to do so. Printing is not going away. Canon and Epson are still putting big bucks into the development of new machines, new inks and new papers; they only commit those resources after careful market research indicates the should, because they have shareholders to satisfy. And let us not ignore that gallery shows of photographs for the most part still consist of prints hanging on walls.

[Ernst Dinkla]

May be someone will invent a set of electroluminescent inks that you can put in your pigment printer, print your image and then attach to a little battery to make it glow back at you.  Best of both worlds?  Crazy?

http://www.oled-info.com/oled-inkjet-printing?page=0%2C1

Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

http://www.pigment-print.com/spectralplots/spectrumviz_1.htm
November 2016 update, 700+ inkjet media white spectral plots

[GrahamBy]

Wonder if "catching up" would have unintended consequences?

If we forget colour for a moment, the issue becomes one of dynamic range, as pointed out earlier by Marcin. You can get the high end by shining brighter light on the print, while the low end is a question of blacker inks... but in any case, you're going to need to use special lighting to get high DR, maybe with compensation for non-flat lighting, as per Doug. The eventual logic of this is that the print becomes a sort of virtual image until it is placed under the specified lighting... a less extreme version of a digital image being displayed on a screen.

The same issues arise: cost of the viewing station vs cost of the screen, lack of portability, the need to "show" the images rather than just let the viewer wander from print to print. Do you remember how bad it was to be caught up in an enthusiastic photographer's bad slide show?

A question re the large digital frames/screens: do you have one for portrait and one for landscape, or do you compromise on showing one format in reduced size... or do you spin the display on the wall