Printing: Digital In -- Silver Out?

[Geoff Wittig]

I think the glow, luminance and maybe romance could possibly just exist in our minds. I for one don't mind that,  because for me photography goes somewhat deeper than pixel peeping. There's also something about viewing a print just by picking it up holding it and viewing it close-up, that's the ultimate experience. When you do that inkjet prints just are not in the same league as a fine silver print. Maybe it's a mind thing.

That's my thinking on the matter. Expert darkroom printers spend years perfecting their craft. Just the right developer, fine-tuned print exposure methods, the optimal paper...the whole process is very personal and very involved. There's a real emotional investment in the final product that's an intangible part of the "art". I think this leads to an unwarranted notion that there's something magical about a darkroom print, when objective side by side comparison with an inkjet print made with equal skill won't support it.

Obviously (to anyone who's tried it), producing a really excellent inkjet print is not just a matter of hitting 'command-p'. There's just the same kind of very personal craft involved; optimizing the file to personal taste, iterative testing until just the right combination of inkset and paper is found, proofing and fine-tuning...if anything I believe there's more room for individual interpretation, not less, when compared to darkroom work.

Which is not to denigrate expert darkroom printing. Paul Caponigro's glowing image of two alabaster-like pears in a dark wooden bowl...it's pure poetry. But go with what works best for your own images. I personally don't think that LED-exposed darkroom printing paper will really yield a more expressive or beautiful print than an expertly crafted inkjet print. But YMMV.

[buckshot]

This issue has been dealt with by some very knowledgeable people. Brooks Jensen describes side-by-side comparison of the same photograph produced by four different methods: platinum, gelatin silver, photogravure, and inkjet. Almost without exception, the inkjet print was chosen as the hands-down best version æsthetically by very experienced photographers and printers. Richard Benson, former dean of Yale's art school and an expert printer experienced in methods from platinum to photogravure to web offset, is very blunt on the subject. Inkjet prints can't quite yet match the surface characteristics of a fine darkroom gelatin silver print. Dye transfer prints can still yield a subtle color purity not acheivable by any other method. But in every other respect, inkjet prints are æsthetically simply better than darkroom prints. In blinded tests, even the most experienced photographers tend to choose injet prints over darkroom prints. Yes, a beautiful gelatin silver darkroom print is a wonderful thing. But put an expertly made inkjet print next to it, and it starts to look a little less special.

This may be a bit OT, but not too much. I too read Brooks Jensen's interview with Richard Benson. Very interesting, lots of good points. What particularly caught my attention was how he (Benson) was somewhat flummoxed when Brooks pointed out that, with the digital file in hand, anyone can produce a print of equal, if not better, quality than you can - of your image. Where then is the hand of the photographer in the final print? Benson doesn't really have an answer to this, simply saying that the signing of the print is what elevates it from other, identical prints, and transforms it into the collectible artefact. Hmm, not a very satisfying answer. I think we've become obsessed with the technically perfect print - the blackest blacks, the whitest whites, the sharpest images etc. There are more 'technically perfect' prints floating around now than there have ever been. Personally, I'd take a finely handcrafted B&W or platinum print every time over the rather souless, but technically excellent, inkjet prints that are flying off inkjet printers all around the world at an unbelievable pace.

[eronald]

I really don't get it. Printing with inkjet is as interpretative as post. You burn, dodge, set curves, mask etc. Then the actual image is refined with respect to the medium that it will be impressed on. The only concession to modernity is that once you have the final print file, you can churn out a bunch of identical copies *on that model printer and paper*.

Whether inkjet can be as good as silver - how should I know? I am already incapable of reproducing the results of some guys I know who do inkjet, and I'd bet they can't reproduce my inkjet work either.

Edmund

This may be a bit OT, but not too much. I too read Brooks Jensen's interview with Richard Benson. Very interesting, lots of good points. What particularly caught my attention was how he (Benson) was somewhat flummoxed when Brooks pointed out that, with the digital file in hand, anyone can produce a print of equal, if not better, quality than you can - of your image. Where then is the hand of the photographer in the final print? Benson doesn't really have an answer to this, simply saying that the signing of the print is what elevates it from other, identical prints, and transforms it into the collectible artefact. Hmm, not a very satisfying answer. I think we've become obsessed with the technically perfect print - the blackest blacks, the whitest whites, the sharpest images etc. There are more 'technically perfect' prints floating around now than there have ever been. Personally, I'd take a finely handcrafted B&W or platinum print every time over the rather souless, but technically excellent, inkjet prints that are flying off inkjet printers all around the world at an unbelievable pace.

[Wayne Fox]

Another thought: Work your image up in Photoshop, and get it where you want it to be, and then someone design a "scanner type unit" where, you'd put your Silver paper face down on the glass of this imager/scanner, and the image would be shot up onto the silver paper, then you take it out and develop it in traditional silver chemistry. Again, the goal: the end result is silver paper, instead of inkjet. It wouldn't project, like an enlarger. Think about it more like how a normal Epson flatbed scanner now work, but in the other direction.

Sounds like a Durst Theta 76 printer ... been around for a while.

Exposes Black and white paper with a laser that is processed in Black and White chemicals.

Ted Dillard did a little write up here ...http://www.teddillard.com/2009/04/digital-silver-printing.html

[gwhitf]

Sounds like a Durst Theta 76 printer ... been around for a while.

Story of my life -- five minutes too late for everything.

But actually, after I thought about my initial post, I thought back to all the plumbing and sheetrocks walls I've installed when moving into a new place, rather than now, which is roll in the desk, plug the Mac into the wall, and get to work. I just think we might have come too far, (too easy), in digital, for the masses to go back to processing their own paper any more. At least in the masses.